I started my Coventry City Manager Mode career on the PlayStation3 way back on October 6th. That was only about 3 weeks ago but already it feels like another age. FIFA09 had just come out and everything was still shiny-bright and sparkly-new. PES2009 was still in the future and I hoped for great things.

I’ve remarked once or twice on the blog that FIFA09 (for all its faults) is roughly in the same ballpark where I imagined PES would be playing by now. There are many areas where FIFA09 falls short. Extended playing time has shown me that there are some areas where it becomes seriously unsatisfying. I’ll get to them over the next few days (chaotic, farcical, midfield ping-pong, anyone?). But none of the issues make FIFA09 a bad game, in my current view.

And so to Manager Mode… It just cannot compare to Master League. This is what I keep coming back to. EA have spent all this time and money catching up with—and smoothly overtaking—PES on the gameplay front, but on the game modes front they’re still a good way behind. I don’t count online, simply because I personally never play online (or so rarely that I might as well never). One of the FIFA2010 team’s top priorities has surely got to be providing OFFLINE gamers (the silent majority) with a career mode to match this all-new FIFA’s vaulting ambition.

My Coventry City career, begun all those weeks ago in another age, got off to a good start. I won two of my first three games, and then went on a spell of drawing loads of games. This roughly coincided with my switch to a mixture of semi-manual and assisted controls. I wasn’t worried about holding steady in mid-table, as I was doing. The club’s board expectations were simple: avoid relegation. That was all. With a fairly decent squad, that was a pretty easily achievable aim. At least I was probably safe from any threat of the sack (so I thought).

Regular readers will know that I’ve spent time since on the Xbox360 version of the game, playing online and completing a memorable season with Atletico Madrid in a Spanish Manager Mode career. I returned to the PS3 and Coventry City just a few days ago.

And I’m in trouble.

I can’t buy a result at the moment. I’m only a few places from the foot of the table. I’m just over two-thirds of the way through the season and my record is something like won 5, drawn 9, lost 11.

I’m conceding stupid goals, and scoring none back. My players are decent but I can’t consistently create chances. The chances I do create, I miss. I’ve had many occasions to wonder if I could go back to Assisted shooting. (No, I can never go back now. It’d feel all wrong.)

I’m playing on Professional difficulty, the same level I played on with Atletico, using the same controls scheme. Yet it feels like a different game. This is all to the good—FIFA09 has finally buried the long-standing criticism that all its teams and players feel much the same. There’s a gulf between the best teams and players at least as wide as on PES. The feel is just different. You know when you’ve got a good player on the ball, and when you’ve got a donkey, and all the gradations in between.

Here’s a clip that will interest anyone who has yet to sample FIFA09. This year, the CPU has quite a few extra tricks in its locker. Not the least of which is a sudden, devastating long ball up to a lone forward, giving him a one-on-one with your keeper. All too many times, I’ve had a rush of blood and charged my keeper out, when I should just leave him at home and at least make the CPU score past him. I’ve actually conceded goals almost exactly like this one on about five separate occasions:

The other night I was trying and mostly failing to get my FIFA09 game back together after a week of PES2009. I went through a five-game spell of scoring no goals and being comprehensively thrashed by the CPU. On Professional difficulty. That’s the third of five difficulty levels, and supposedly quite easy this year.

I think my ‘best’ defeat was 2-0. I just kept trying to move the ball, PES-style, from defence to attack in the bare minimum number of passes. It doesn’t work in FIFA09. It can work, sometimes, as in real football; but overall, no, the game just thinks you’re having a laugh…

I scored one goal that lifted my spirits. In a custom Tournament group match, Russia vs England, I was playing as England and had a corner. Beckham the taker. It was a weak, aimless corner that bounced in no-man’s-land. But then, as it bounced up…

And here’s a slow-motion view, from a closer vantage point:

Looks pretty good, doesn’t it? And it was a rare weather-affected game, too: the Russian snow swirled around the pitch.

For those who can’t/won’t view the clips, the goal’s a full-blooded bicycle kick from the edge of the penalty box. Lampard’s the scorer. The ball fairly rockets into the top corner of the net (and rebounds a weirdly long distance out). It’s a real showbiz kind of goal.

I was happy and smiling. But I didn’t actually mean it. I certainly didn’t aim it. As the corner came over I had just pressed the shoot button in hope, trying for a header, or maybe a half-volley. The bicycle kick was a total surprise. All I had really done was initiate a special kind of in-game cutscene.

I think you need to feel that a great goal has occurred naturally, as part of the normal pattern of play. FIFA09 does a great job of conveying this feeling with other kinds of exceptional goals. If EA’s brave new world of football gaming has brought us anything, it’s brought us an enhanced feeling of control. The game’s semi-manual and manual control options are supposed to remove assisted shots from your repertoire. This bicycle kick was the epitome of an assisted shot. The game was throwing me a biscuit.

Am I being too cynical? Maybe. The goal does look fantastic, and I was very happy with it. I spent several minutes uploading two replays and tinkering with the slow-motion controls. But I’d prefer a less… encapsulated feel to such goals.

I’ve had PES2009 for a week now. I’ve given it every chance to win back my affections. I’ve played it every day, after a few weeks of playing FIFA09 every day. After at first being horrified (frankly) by the relative crudity of PES’s gameplay—gameplay that I’ve known and passionately loved for the best part of a decade—I’ve now recovered a little. I’ve settled into it. I find there’s a lot to like in this game at the moment.

But it’s not really enough. Not any more.

I’ve finished the first half of my first season in Master League on PES2009. I’ve won a few games, but I’ve lost a few more. There’ll be no promotion for me this season. I managed to get to the second round of the D2 Cup, where I met Stoke in the first leg at my ground. That game ended 0-0. I was happy with that—no away goal. Sadly, I lost the second leg pretty comprehensively: 3-0 to Stoke.

Back in the league, I took the lead against Zenit St Petersburg and thought I’d hold on for the win. They scored twice late on to take the win. I had no complaints. The Default players are really showing their lack of quality now—and of course, as I always say, I’m an average player myself anyway.

I did stop the rot with a 1-0 win over Hammarby. After a great start to the season my goals had seriously dried up. I scored this one with Fouque, a dark horse amongst the Defaults.

This is a pretty ordinary goal. From now on, I’m going back to my old rule: only spectacular or peculiar goals will be posted from now on. I’ll be posting a FIFA09 goal tomorrow that’s pretty spectacular.

The goal won me the game, and lifted me up to 7th place. I suppose there’s a very slender chance of lifting myself back into promotion contention. I’ve never won promotion in the first season of any Master League career, ever. I hope to have a good negotiations period and pick up some better players.

But I don’t know when I’ll play the rest of this season. Master League is the greatest game mode ever. But I no longer think PES is the greatest football game. Historically, yes, it is the greatest game—it’d take another several years of good FIFAs to even threaten that reputation. But not in its current guise, in season 2009. Not with a bigger, bolder, and generally better rival on the scene.

Last night I put down my joypad, stopped playing PES2009, and started playing FIFA09 again. The re-acquaintance period was traumatic. I tried to ‘PES it up’ out there on the pitch. A decade’s-worth of PES muscle memory had come back to the forefront over the past week. I tried to one-two-three pass my way upfield, all the time. I couldn’t shoot at all.

I think it took FIFA08 and FIFA09 to show that PES is an arcade-style game and it always has been. Apart from the pitiful old-style FIFAs, we had nothing else to measure PES by; it was its own yardstick. PES hasn’t really changed over the past few years—it’s FIFA that’s changed. And lately, it’s me that’s changed…

To cut an already too-long story short: as of now I am going to play FIFA09 for most of the time, and PES2009 for some of the time. I don’t know the exact formula yet. I’ll play it by ear, see how it goes. I’m thinking maybe a week of FIFA, then a few days of PES. This might not work out. If there’s too much ‘cross-contamination’ between the games, I’ll stick with one game (FIFA) and play the other (PES) in the future, when I fancy a break.

I could change my mind at any time, do whatever I want. The forums are chattering right now about ‘FIFA fatigue’. I don’t know yet if there’s any truth to it. But I’m not bound by what I say on the blog. I do the blog in order to write about what’s happening in my football gaming, not the other way round.

But what does it mean for my Master League? This is what’s making me feel absolutely terrible, like some kind of miserable, snivelling traitor. I feel not so much a traitor to PES, as a traitor to Master League. But Master League is played on PES, and PES just isn’t satisfying to me now in the way that FIFA09 is. Having these kinds of thoughts always makes me feel that a thunderbolt is going to smite me from on high. But that’s how it is. A new reality has dawned. PES has been superseded, and it’s time to get over it.