PES Chronicles

In the end, I was lucky to finish 3rd in the league this season. With 9 matches left I was sitting quite comfortably in 2nd place, with a theoretical chance of catching the runaway leaders, Porto. I believed I was a certainty to finish 2nd…

For the first 4 or 5 of those last 9 matches I suffered a most peculiar run of matches without a win. I had losses that I would struggle to explain. I played against a few of the bottom clubs, who all played considerably above themselves to beat me or squeeze draws out of tight games.

Minor teams in Master League who play like 1970 Brazil on amphetamines is not a new thing, of course. For all the series’ much-vaunted realism, this has been a constant (and IMO disappointing) inconsistency in the mode. West Ham, a bottom 6 side all season, beat me 1-0 and played better than any other side I’ve faced all season. I include my two Cup nemeses, Man Utd and Lyon, in that assessment. Liverpool, a bottom 3 side(!), held me to a 0-0. Burnley beat me 3-1. Eventually I got myself together and scraped enough wins to hold 3rd spot in the end. But it was tight. Very tight. At one stage I was down in 7th place, looking at a Europa League slot next season. I’d have absolutely hated that.

Zaki, my main striker, returned from long-term injury. He was eerily just like a real player struggling to get back in the groove. He did next to nothing in all 9 matches. He was a total shadow of his former self. He got one goal and a few assists, and did nothing else. This was the player who spent last season and the first part of this season tearing up trees out on the pitch. He’ll be 32 next season. Is he finished in my team? I’ll have to see.

Enough whining. Here’s the final table:

Liverpool are relegated. It’s a shocker for those of us who remember the years when the real-life Liverpool were the Imperial Rome of the football world.

The team of the season featured 3 of my players. My created player, ‘not-Greg’, is 30 now and starting to lose a point or two on his stats. I think he’s got another good few seasons in him yet—and he does still pop up with great goals, such as the second one in today’s clip. The first is from Nakamura, another 30-something player:

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My Capuano mini-obsession continues. I love to check on his growth. He’s gained yet another point of OVR rating—up to 92 now. And his AMF position training is complete. At first his rating for the new position was disappointingly low, around 68, but after a few matches it was already creeping up. At the time of writing he rates 78 in the AMF position. I’m playing him there regularly, and I’ve adjusted his focus training to develop his shooting and dribbling some more. He’s currently the only truly left-footed AMF I’ve got.

I’ve been toying with some craziness in relation to Capuano. Many years ago I heard about a Football Manager fanatic who liked one of his players so much that he sent off for a club shirt bearing his name. Er…

Well… I’ve had a look around to see if I could do a similar thing with Capuano. The real Coventry City’s online store would have been more than happy to oblige me. (The image is a screengrab from a ‘build your own shirt’ widget on the site. 16 is Capuano’s squad number at my Coventry City.)

£33 including delivery… But, no, I didn’t ‘pull the trigger’, as the saying has it. They were out of stock of the long-sleeved version of the shirt, which is the one I would have gone for.

A disturbing twist in the tale? Of course. What isn’t disturbing about a grown man being moved to acquire an article of clothing branded with the name of a fictitious player in a football computer game? I might as well be one of those Japanese who dresses up as Zelda and prances around with a plastic sword.

And yet, and yet… I think it’d be a really nice memento to have and keep for the future. So I am still looking for a Capuano football shirt. If/when I get it, I’ll show it. That’s a promise.

I’ve now played until the mid-season transfer window in season 14. I’ve only just gone top of the table. It’s the first time I’ve been top all season. For a change I’ll post the full mid-season Division 1 table:

Burnley have faded after being a strong force last season. Chelsea have rallied well after being poor last season and at the start of this season. But look who’s in the bottom 3: Liverpool. It’s shocking to see them there, even if it’s only in the cartoony make-believe football world of ML.

In the Champions League things were not straightforward. I drew and lost my opening two matches of the qualifying group. Then I won three on the bounce to secure the second qualifying spot with a game to spare. I simmed the meaningless final fixture against Rosenborg, which the game determined was a 3-3 draw.

The draw for the next round has been made. For the 4th season in a row, my first opponents in the knockout stage are French. This time it’s Olympique Lyonnais. Over the past three seasons at this stage of the competition, I’ve faced FC Sochaux, RC Lens, and Stade Rennais. What are the odds of this kind of draw happening 4 seasons in a row?

I’m still in the Division 1 Cup. (I have a feeling about this season. I hope I’m not tempting fate—I probably am—but I can smell a Treble. It all feels right.)

My second round opponents in the D1 Cup were Spurs. They’re currently not the D1 superpower they were a few seasons ago, but they’re still tricky to play against. However I beat them very easily in both legs, 3-0 both times. I even failed to notice that the second leg was a Cup match until it was over.

Just before the mid-season transfer window, I suffered a terrible blow. Zaki, my main striker, picked up an injury that’ll effectively keep him out for the rest of the season. Zaki has been an integral part of my team over the past few seasons. He’s actually lost a point or two of OVR rating, and he’s 31 now, but he’s still a great striker. I came within a whisker of winning the Golden Boot with him last season.

So I mourned Zaki for a few minutes (he’s unlikely to be the same player after the injury, and will probably be sold). Then I went and slapped in panic transfer bids for five top young strikers (pictured left). I doubt I’ll be successful in getting any of them. I could be left to make do with what I’ve got – which would not be too bad actually. Bamen Roberk, your time may be at hand.

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I was looking through some old stuff the other day and came across my PES5 videos. Among the goals I recorded at the time (using MaxDrive to transfer from PS2 to PC!) was one in particular that I always think of first in the general category of ‘your most favourite-ever PES goal, ever’. It came in Master League (of course). The scorer was Bergkamp:

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What makes a great goal? It’s at least partly subjective, perhaps mostly so. Some people salivate over the Argentina ‘team goal’ from Germany 2006. I failed to see, and still fail to see, why so much fuss was made about it. Tellingly, few people today would instantly think of it when asked to recall great World Cup goals. Oh, I know that it was a technical marvel, and I love to score goals like it in computer games myself. But Maxi Rodriguez’s showbiz volley later in the same tournament was a genuinely great goal, IMO.

I love my PES5 Bergkamp goal. I’ve scored plenty of memorable goals before and since, but none  have yet occupied the special place in my memory that this one does.

So far, my PES2010 Master League adventure has been notable for the lack of big-name players I’ve been able to acquire for my team. It’s very unlike previous versions of the mode, where you could equip yourself pretty much at will with all the Ronaldos and Platinis and whoever else took your fancy.

Up to this point, starting season 14, my best players have mostly been home-grown, or players that aren’t really household names in real-life. Amir Zaki and Pedro Munitis have been amazing for me. Nakamura has been evergreen from the first season he arrived. He’s currently 28 years old and has just hit the 90 OVR rating mark. My own ‘not-Greg’ created player has been an important midfielder. And I’ve had many, many talents come up from the Youth team and establish themselves—players like Sazi, McCann, Cejumi, and Capuano, to name just a few.

For just one example: CAPUANO. I signed him from the Youth team as a 17-year-old rated around 65 OVR. Look at him now, aged 24. I’ll never sell him. Well, perhaps an offer in the region of £100m would give me something to think about, but for anything less than that, the answer’d be NO. He’s got some growing to do yet. I’m going to retrain him to add AMF to his repertoire of positions. I’ll retool his focus training accordingly and beef up his shooting and dribbling. I’m genuinely excited to see how it all turns out. Will it wreck what he already is? I won’t know unless I try.

Those of us who’ve always played Master League love it for the in-depth immersion and sense of involvement with the team that it brings as part of the overall package. PES2010’s all-new Master League  is delivering on this front in bucketloads. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: for me Master League is PES.

Okay, time to stop gushing and get on with season 14. I changed both kits. Home: a dark ‘Croatia-style’ kit. Away: a yellowy ‘Galatasaray-style’ kit.

Once again I’ve had minimal activity in the pre-season transfer market. After wages and costs I had £20,000,000 to play with. I tried again for Scholes, Pirlo, etc., as I have done for the last four or five transfer windows now. But none of them would come to me.

I think it’s a flaw in the otherwise excellent new transfer system that I have no real idea why some players won’t sign. I am left to guess that it’s due to my relatively low club ranking. Currently I’m only 50th in the ML world, and presumably those players want to go somewhere more prestigious. That’s fine. A few Cups, ideally a few Doubles or Trebles, should soon fix that. And it’s not as if I’m aching to get hold of the big names. I’m having possibly my best-ever Master League experience with the players I can get. Who needs Scholes & co.? Not me. (But it would be nice, anyway.)

With nobody signing up, then, I settled for recruiting one new player from the Youth team. GATTUSO is the player in question, and obviously I expect great things from him in the future.

In the League, I navigated my way very carefully indeed through the opening round of the D1 Cup. I’ve been eliminated at this stage two seasons in a row. Maximum focus and concentration. AEK Athens, at home, first leg: beat them 2-0, easily. Second leg was a predictable torrid affair that I always felt I was struggling to maintain any semblance of control in. 0-0 it finished. I am through to the second round for the first time in 3 seasons. The Treble is still on.

Patchy form in the League. Now that I’m pretty much always in the hunt for the title, I’ll stop posting screenshots of the league table in every post until things get interesting near the end of the season. Having a league table picture in every post is a bit much, and largely pointless. I’m currently 5th after 7 matches with a record of W3 D2 L1. One of the victories was a momentous 6-1 drubbing of Spurs, who are still a top side in my ML world, so it was a notable victory indeed. Spurs’ First XI is starting to look very weird—as they all are, really:

In Europe, there’s a familiar look and feel to my Champions League group. The other teams are Juventus, Helsinki, and Rosenborg. I was up against Rosenborg last year, and this is now the third time in four seasons that I’ve faced Juventus in the CL group stage. The campaign hasn’t started very well, either. I was 2-0 up at home against Juve but shipped two late goals to only draw 2-2. That felt bad enough, but then I lost 4-1 away to Rosenborg. Their four goals included this extraordinary own-goal from my defender, Carragher—or was it an own-goal?

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It certainly looked and felt, at the time, like an own goal. My keeper’s non-reaction supports this: his lack of any kind of response is typical of the code not knowing what to do. It happened durng a period of play where I was getting very frustrated, which for me always means lots of clamping and button-mashing. Here I was mashing the slide-tackle button, trying desperately to stop what felt like irresistible AI momentum towards my goal. I saw my power meter charge up just before the kick happened, which makes me think the game deemed Carragher to have the ball under his control for a split second, and this really was an own-goal. But the second replay suggests the AI player’s foot was in there, doing something…

Whatever happened, whoever kicked it, I was very unhappy with my keeper. Zuberbuhler still is a good keeper, overall, but he’s started showing these moments of eccentricity that are costing me. It might really be time for Regen Buffon to claim the No. 1 shirt, or at least occupy it for a while. I’m undecided.

Season 13 has ended. I’ve really zipped through this one. The League was safe. I won it for the fourth time in a row. The latter part of the season was all about my Champions League adventure. Unlike last season and the season before, I had a decent run in the knockout stages. No, I have not won the thing, but I got as far as the semi-final this time. Here is a very brief highlights package—including, at the end, a really awful goal that helped to knock me out:

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My first knockout opponents were Stade Rennais. It was really scary given that at the same stage in two previous seasons I’ve been eliminated by supposedly minor French sides. Indeed the first leg was one of the toughest matches I can ever remember playing in PES, ever. It really is the case that the AI’s speed and overall toughness gets ratcheted up in the knockout stages. Whether this is in keeping with real life or not is another debate.

Personally I like the added difficulty, but has there got to be so much SPEED? This is true for the whole game, not just in the Champions League sections of it. All last summer we heard great things about how PES2010 was finally a proper, grown-up, slowed-down effort. Again and again (and again), that was what the previewers said: PES2010 was a slow game. You get time on the ball. Rejoice!

But then the game came out and, speed-wise, it was a great disappointment. It’s often far too fast for it to be anything but a minus point in the overall scheme of things. Konami simply didn’t have the balls to stick with the code that was shown to previewers, something I hope those previewers will remember this coming summer. We can only hope that everybody holds onto their respective balls for PES2011.

So I beat Stade Rennais 2-1 at home, and then lost 1-2 at their place. With ten minutes to go, extra time was beckoning, but then I got the winner.

Next up in the quarter finals were Porto, my divisional rivals. They were absolute monsters. I thought the speed was 100mph against Stade Rennais; here, it felt more like 1000mph. Once again after two legs we were tied at 2-2, and this time I went into extra time. Penalties were just around the corner. I haven’t taken more than two penalties in all 13 seasons of Master League so far. I’ve never been in a penalty shootout. I didn’t fancy my chances. With seconds left I lobbed a hopeful aerial through-ball in the general direction of Munitis. One fortunate bounce later, I took a potshot, and the ball hit a defender’s knee and looped over the Porto keeper into the net… Yesssssss.

My semi-final opponents were a team called ZAR BLANCO/AZUL. I’d never heard of them before I met them here, although it seems they do have quite a profile in their native – er – where the hell are they from? Google is not my friend in this instance. It seems they’re from Pro Evolution Soccer land(?), although other results indicate… Uruguay? Can this be right?

That’s their First XI, on the left. They wore purple, or dark pink depending on your perspective, and just like their predecessors they were beasts to play against, only even more so.

I did well to limit the damage in the first leg at their place, which I lost 2-0. Once again the game felt as if it was on fast-forward. A million miles an hour. In the second leg, just as frantic and stupidly fast, I did get an early goal to give myself a massive chance. But as is so often the way with me and PES2010, I then conceded a goal straight from their kick-off. That was bad enough, but just seconds later I conceded yet another one, and it was the killer. It’s the final goal in the clip above, and it was a proper howler. The score was 1-3 on the day, 1-5 on aggregate. That’s how it ended.

In the League, I romped to the title with a few games to spare. The chief interest in the closing stages was whether I could win my first Golden Boot with Zaki. It wasn’t to be, sadly. I scored a few, but the AI player at the head of the queue did as well.

I won the title by 9 points, but my goals-scored tally was the worst it’s been for a few seasons. I’ll have to keep an eye on that situation and go hunting for a top striker if required. Here’s the full final league table—which shows an interesting turn of events for Manchester City, Chelsea, and Liverpool:

The team of the season was a nice bonus: my created player, ‘not-Greg’, won player of the year. I had three players in the overall Division 1 First XI. My two full-backs are both Youth team promotees. I’m proud of them. Proud!

And so that’s that. Season 13 done and dusted, on with season 14. Year 2022-2023. The quest for the Treble continues.