The most common scoreline in FIFA08 is 1-0. That also happens to be the most common scoreline in the real game of football. It’s day 4 of FIFA08 week on PES Chronicles, and I’m re-immersed in my Manager Mode career with Coventry City.

I started this career in the weeks leading up to the release of PES2008, then roughly abandoned it as PESday neared. Now here I am, back with my tail firmly between my legs…

Manager Mode on FIFA08: All the real teams, with the real kits, with the real players, playing in their real leagues. This much is well known. It’s never meant anything to me in the past and it means nothing to me now.

Gameplay is the most important element of a football game. The second most important element of a football game is gameplay. It’s also the third most important element.

After that point, yes, I’ll admit that presentation and licensing might count for something. However, there is evidence to show that some things might have been a little rushed…

————

I started out in the Championship with Coventry City, with the real squad made up of the likes of Ward, Tabb, and Adebola et al. Stunning mediocrities all. (Sorry, lads, if you’re reading this, but you are.)

I started on Semi-Pro. After a few games, I went down to Amateur. I didn’t come back up to Semi-Pro for about ten, twenty games. Something like that. It took me that long to get comfortable with the core mechanics of FIFA08.

I was mid-table near the end of my first season, but then I put together a run of results that lifted me up to 5th place and a playoff spot. Er, in theory anyway. Imagine my extreme disgruntlement when no actual playoffs took place. Suddenly it was the next season. I was still in the Championship. The third-placed team had automatically been promoted to the Premier League.

Bad, EA. BAD. I trust that there have been red faces among the development team, and not a few smacked bottoms. The English league non-playoff fiasco is just one of a number of niggling annoyances in FIFA08. Thankfully, the majority of them are off the field of play. Read ‘em and weep, Seabass.

Here’s my current FIFA08 First XI:

Unlike my PES2008 First XI, this one is pretty constant. You can upgrade your club’s fitness coach stage by stage (at a progressively higher cost) to the point where your players are almost always fully fit before every game. Extreme fixture congestion only has a slight impact.

Until I started to get good players, I played a 3-5-2 in almost every game. FIFA08 is all about the build-up play. It’s a rare goal that isn’t preceded by a good deal of passing - thus, midfield dominance is a necessity.

I have a pretty solid bench as well. Among them are the likes of O’Shea, Pedro Mendes, Stevanovic, and Chamakh. I’ve never heard of some of them but they’re very good…

It’s pretty easy to accumulate enough cash to build a great team with Coventry City within a few seasons. I got automatic promotion in season 2008-09, and started battling it out in the Premier League. I have finished 8th, 5th, and 3rd in the past three seasons. Currently, in the middle of season 2012-13, I’m challenging for three trophies: League, Cup, and European Cup.

PES2008’s holy grail in Master League is the Treble. FIFA08 offers the crazily ambitious football gamer a mouth-watering prize, at least in the English League: the Quadruple.

Sadly, the Quadruple is over for me in this season. I have just been knocked out of the League Cup by Burnley. My team of quasi-galacticos was out-muscled and outplayed by the Championship upstarts in a grim encounter at Turfmoor.

That can happen in FIFA08 - a bit too often, actually, for my liking. You can play superbly against Chelsea one week and beat them 2-0 ( a great result in FIFA08), then take on Northampton Town in the Cup, struggle to keep the score at 0-0, and finally win 8-7 on penalties after extra time. I know because it happened to me on Saturday night.

Michael Owen is my top striker. I’ve had him for two full seasons now and he’s scored 20+ in both. Another roll-of-the-eyes FIFA08 moment: after signing him, Owen ‘held a press conference’ where he gushed about playing for Coventry City and said he had supported the club ever since he was a boy… Groan.

Anyway. Suspension of disbelief and all that. Here’s Owen executing a lovely scissors kick in the box:

Those close-range scissors-kick goals are among FIFA08’s most common goal types. Long punts over the keeper’s head and weak headers are among the others. It’s not a perfect game, not by any means. Sometimes you’ll score a common type of goal for a few games running. You’ll think you’ve got FIFA08 cracked and it ain’t so tough after all. Then you’ll find yourself locked at 0-0 and having to sweat to craft a proper goal, and know that you’re still learning the ropes.

I signed Mathieu just to see what he would be like in FIFA08 after trying and failing to get him for so long in my PES2008 ML career. He’s been great. Here’s a goal from Mathieu in FIFA08:

Yes, that’s a pretty ordinary goal by PES standards. By FIFA08 standards it’s a rarity, and one to treasure. The shooting is that difficult.

Ahhh, Europe. Continent of style, culture - and regular, world-engulfing, armed conflicts (we’re long overdue the next one). Europe is also home to a couple of other remarkable things: the greatest club football teams on Earth, and the Eurovision Song Contest.

Struggling against Chelsea and Real Madrid in my quest for the PES2008 Treble, I found myself calling to mind one of Eurovision’s most memorable tunes.The nature of the battle just seemed so evocative somehow.

In the League, there is no struggle: it’s a question of when, not if I win it. The two Cups are more delicately poised, as only Cup competitions can be.

———-

After drawing 2-2 away against Chelsea in the first leg of the D1 Cup semi-final, I was happy enough. Two away goals are nothing to be sniffed at. I went into the return leg completely confident of victory. This is a dangerous mindset to be in. Sometimes, even PES2008 will creep up and mug you when you go into a match thinking you only have to turn up to win it. I’ve come a cropper once or twice.

But I approached the second leg in the right frame of mind: fully concentrated and with a grim purpose. Now that I’ve decided to restart Master League once this season is over, I’m even more focused on winning the Treble.

I beat Chelsea 3-0 at my ground, winning the semi final 5-2 on aggregate.

It was not as straightforward as it sounds. I had to wait a long time for my first goal. Chelsea probed and harried. I had little time on the ball, and created no clear-cut chances. Chelsea missed a couple of good opportunities. As half-time approached I felt myself getting tense. While it was 0-0 there was always the chance they’d sneak a goal. I wanted a goal for myself to give me some insurance.

Then I got it. Traore collected the ball in the centre of midfield. I went off on a run, evaded a couple of defenders, then let one rip. It struck the far post and bounced across the goal, dropping inside the net on the other side:

I exhaled with relief. Now I was certain of the win. I killed off the match with two more quick goals.

So I am through to the Division 1 Cup Final. There I will play… Aston Villa. How very exciting.

————-

In the second leg of the European Cup semi final I was a lot less confident of progress. In the first leg I’d allowed Real Madrid to score two away goals at my ground. I did get two goals of my own to make it 2-2, but it still meant I had to score at Real Madrid’s place or crash out of the tournament, and thus fail at the Treble, and thus be unhappy.

Real Madrid impressed me a lot in the first leg. They played probably the best that any CPU team has played against me in PES2008.

They started just as impressively in the second leg. Their left back, Drenthe, is not only big and strong (more like a CB than a SB), he is also very quick and very deadly with crosses. He raced down my wing after about ten minutes and hoisted a ball into the box. There was Raul to nod home, making it 1-0 to Madrid on the night.

Oh, crap.

Still, I’d known that I’d have to score at least once in this game to win it. Now I had to score at least twice. Pesky away goals. Who invented them?

As the half wore on it looked as if it wasn’t going to be my night. I just had that feeling. The feeling you get from a PES match when everything is an ordeal. Simple passes that go astray; shots that scream miles over the bar, or straight down the keeper’s throat; tackles that miss completely or leave the opposition player flat on the ground as the referee reaches for his pocket.

I made it to half time with the score still at 1-0. Football is a game of two halves…

I got a goal soon after the break. I broke up yet another raid by Drenthe down my right side. (Note to self: must check out Drenthe at some point in Master League 2.0) He was out of position, and I lofted a delicious aerial through-ball over the top to Shimizu. The little fella’s jet-heeled boots left the Madrid defence trailing a long way behind. I was one-on-one with Casillas. Could I do it?

Yep, I could do it. Shimizu dinked the ball past the keeper. 1-1 on the night. 3-3 on aggregate. Madrid still had that one extra away goal. I needed another goal.

It didn’t look as if it was going to come. By the 80th minute, that awful feeling I mentioned earlier was a full-on conviction that this was it, the Treble was over, it was not meant to be, et cetera.

Duffy had come on for the exhausted Guimaraes, who had been chasing Drenthe up and down the pitch all night. I got the ball with Duffy near the halfway line, and went off on a little run toward Madrid’s net….

Goal! The magnificent Beerens strikes again. That’s about 20 goals for him in all competitions this season so far. At the point where Duffy breaks into the Madrid penalty area, I was a hair’s-breadth away from pressing Shoot, but thought better of it and passed to Beerens. I’m glad I did.

1-2 to me, and that’s how it ended. Real Madrid pressed ineffectually in the last few minutes. I wasn’t taking any chances. It was time to park a bus in in my penalty area. I pressed L2+Triangle to switch to my ultra-defensive 5-4-1, and kept it like that. The final whistle went. I was through.

I’ll play Barcelona in the final. Should be easy…

———–

In the League I’ve continued to win matches with scorelines like 6-3, 4-0, 3-1, 5-2, etc. I’m seven points clear with four games to play.

Another win or two will secure the title. A final goal difference of +100 - or more - should be achievable too.

I’m about to play two Cup Finals. Two wins in those games, and the Treble is mine.

This time tomorrow, one way or the other, it’ll all be over.

I want to win the Treble in season 2012. This is my #1 ambition in PES2008 right now. I really want to restart Master League with a new team in a super-tough custom League with all the settings on Very Hard. I’ll even ban myself from having any players that I’ve already had in this ML. I’m also toying with the idea of banning myself from playing a 4-3-3 formation. If I had the option to start with just 10 players in every game, I’d take it. I’m worried about the future for me and PES2008.

I’ve decided that I have to win a Treble with my existing team first, though.

As things stand, I’m sure I could skip through pre-season negotiations without getting any players and still be in with a great chance of winning the Treble. But a few new players won’t do any harm at all. There are still more than a few stiffs in my squad. It never hurts to have several quality players for every position

After a good season 2011, with lots of goals, I am rich. After finishing in 3rd place, I am rich. After winning the Golden Boot with Schwarz, I am rich. I have almost 50,000 points; my salary bill is about 20,000. I am rich.

(Not as rich as I have been in the past, though. I remember one post-season on PES4 when I had 155,000 points to spend. That was after a lot of seasons.)

———————

I didn’t schedule any pre-season friendlies at all. I’m impatient to just get on with things.

I pulled out all the stops to get Mathieu and Micah Richards in the first week of negotiations. I was so keen to get them that I didn’t bother looking for any other players. I’ll cut a long story short, right now: I didn’t get either of them in the whole 8 weeks of negotiations.

I offered silly money and some of my best players as trade-ins. The clubs always accepted. There were no problems there. The players wouldn’t accept. As I’ve mentioned before, I refuse to pay inflated wages. Their current salaries were 1050 and 1100 points. I wouldn’t go higher than 1600 salary points for either of them.

Yes, if I’d offered 2000+ points and/or 1-year contracts, I’d almost certainly have got one or both of them. But no player in the game is worth unbalancing the books for, no matter who they are. And, to be honest, Mathieu and Richards aren’t all that special.

Mathieu at age 25 would be a great buy - but at age 30? I don’t think so. I need to win the Treble in this coming season. For once in my PES Master league life, I’m not really looking to build for the future. This is why I have not gone hunting in the Youth list for a couple of negotiation periods now. I just want to ‘complete’ this Master League and move on.

This is very unusual for me. From PES4 to PES6, I was a one Master League player. I played the same career from late October one year to late October the next. It hurts me to think about breaking that grand tradition in PES2008. In PES5 especially, Master League on Top Player/Normal/Normal in the default Leagues was consistently challenging. PES2008 is a step or two back for the series in so many ways - but not least in terms of its relatively low difficulty once you get over the initial struggles with the Default squad. Curse you Seabass!

All of this is brave talk indeed for a player (me) who has only one D1 Cup to his name in five full seasons so far. I’m talking the talk. I’d better start walking the walk…

——————–

After it became clear to me that I was not going to get Mathieu and Richards, I just shrugged it off and got some other players:

Giovinco - AMF, 25 years old. A quality midfielder who can play in several positions. Stats in the high yellows or reds. I traded Chiesa and paid 3500 points on top. Chiesa has been quite disappointing. His great years are several seasons away. I don’t plan to be playing this Master League in several seasons’ time. I’m building for the now, not for the future.

Jansen - left-sided SB, 25 years old. Traded Weir for him, and paid 500 points. This was one of those negotiations where I didn’t have to pay any extra points. The game judged Weir to be worth more than Jansen. Hmmm. I disagree. To secure the deal, I handed over 500 points. I could afford it.

Kaiser - CMF/SMF/DMF, 22 years old. I was surprised to get this fella. An all-time PES legend, I thought he had ‘Negotiations broken down’ written all over him. I offered Donadel plus 7000 points. Kaiser accepted. I spent a minute exulting over his existing stats (great) and his development curve (stupendous). I felt a pang of regret that if my wishes for season 2012 come true I’ll have to wait a good long while before being able to get him again in my next career.

Marchisio - an AMF with middle shooting who’s been on my shortlist for a few seasons. Finally got him. Very similar to Djiba and Delgado in some ways, but with much more of an attacking bent. I traded Boyd for him, and paid a couple of thousand points.

Beerens - WF/AMF. Traded Frutos for him, and paid several thousand points on top. I have high hopes for this player. On paper he looks to have it all - pace, stamina, strength, shooting - and he’s only 24 years old. Out of all six signings, only Kaiser is better than him.

Iwam Russell - aka Ian Rush - CF, 25 years old. The original and (in my opinion) best goal-poacher extraordinaire. I got him from the Unbelonging list where he’s been for a couple of seasons now. I had to make room in my squad, so I terminated Folan’s contract. Rush has pretty average stats in most areas right now, but his Scoring special ability is there (obviously), and I need someone to play when Schwarz cannot. Someone who is a real fox in the box.

Here’s my full squad for the 2012 campaign:

It’s a slight worry that I’ve jettisoned four strikers and only brought in one true replacement. It looks as if I have too many defenders and midfielders. But enough of those midfielders have secondary positions up front (WF, SS, CF) to cover. Shimizu and Beerens in particular are more or less out-and-out strikers.

Now for the new First XI:

Only two additions - Jansen at left back, and Kaiser on the right of midfield. I remember playing him there in PES5 where he was sensational. I did consider putting Kaiser in at DMF and moving Bradley to the right, but Kaiser’s attacking attributes decided it.

As ever, the First XI is more symbolic than anything else. All of my top players will probably end up starting a roughly equal number of games. I have a pre-tournament qualifying tournament for the European Championships (i.e. the Champions League) to get through in the first few weeks of the season. It’s always a slog when you have to qualify. I think I’ve got the squad to cope. More importantly, I think I’ve now got the experience with the game itself to avoid repeating last year’s disappointing early exit from Europe.

So: I’ve got to win the League. I’ve got to win the D1 Cup. I’ve got to win the European Cup. In any other PES year, I’d have thought it a tall order so soon after a fairly mediocre season. Not this year.

Let the games begin.