Almeria are back in Division 1 of my Master League. I have to be careful when talking about them, as I tend to confuse them with Heracles Almelo, and swap their names around (i.e., ‘Heracles Almeria’, etc.). As much as I’m looking forward to this year’s brace of football games, beginning with FIFA09 in September and then PES2009 in October, I’ll be sorry to leave PES2008 and this particular Master League behind. I’ve had some great games in it and would count it as possibly my second-favourite ML career ever (PES5 would be #1).

But I don’t necessarily have to abandon it in Septemeber/October, of course. There’s always the PSP. I could easily continue this ML career on the PSP forever, in tandem with whatever I get up to on FIFA09/PES2009. It’s a possibility.

So, anyway, Almeria: they’re a bottom-of-the-league team this season, which naturally means they’re tougher to play against than Real Madrid and Baracelona combined. This is no lazy exaggeration, as my fellow ML players will know all too well. I couldn’t pass, I couldn’t run, I couldn’t shoot.

Almeria, with a relative handful of wins and goals to their name all season, were faster, stronger, and more skilful. They took the lead with a penalty after ten minutes. It was a rash challenge from my defender. I was too anxious to protect Cech, my new, raw, 17-year-old goalkeeper, whom I’d picked for this game just to give him some experience and start to build his teamwork rating. I felt it was worth the risk now that I haven’t got an unbeaten record to protect.

But I have still got another bonus target to aim for: conceding less than 20 goals in the league. At this stage, just after halfway, I’ve only conceded 9 goals all season. I’ve got a great chance of doing it.

When the Almeria player broke through I had no confidence in Cech stopping the goal, and I clumsily barged their player off the ball with my defender. The referee immediately gave the penalty. I was expecting a red card for the last-man challenge, but I didn’t even get a yellow. That was something, I suppose. Almeria scored the penalty and I was really up against it.

The game got to the 80th minute and it was still 0-1 to them. It looked like being another ignominious defeat. I was depressed about it. The league title was still probably safe, but after going unbeaten for so long it just felt so lame to lose a couple of games in quick succession like this. Ah, but then Andy Cole—having a quiet season, overall—popped up to score a stylish equaliser:

For anyone unable or unwilling to view the replay, I’ll describe the goal (I find embedded YouTube videos just a bit tiresome too…). Andy Cole, playing on the right up front, lays the ball off to Bradley and starts a run forward. Bradley dinks the ball over the top for Cole to chase. Still about 25 yards out, Cole takes the shot on the half-volley with a delicious scissors-kick. The ball flashes over the keeper’s head into the net. 1-1, and I had to be satisfied with that.

I won the final game of my European Championship qualifying group and finished in first place. My reward? A quarter-final tie against Barcelona. It shouldn’t be too tough, but I’d still have preferred one of the lesser teams.

In the first leg of the D1 Cup semi-final I played Real Madrid—an extremely fast and aggressive and skilful Real Madrid... Kaiser was magnificent for them, dominating play and going on runs for the hell of it. Within the first 15 minutes he’d created four clear-cut chances, two of which came back off my goal’s woodwork.

I sensed danger, somehow… I went into the Formation screen and did something I rarely do. I put a man-marker on Kaiser. I rarely see the point in man-marking, but on this occasion it seemed to work. Bradley was my chosen man and he reduced Kaiser’s effectiveness almost immediately. The game ended 0-0. The second leg will be at their ground.

Many moons ago when I was playing the PlayStation3 version of PES2008, I had a certain great midfield player called Kaiser. A justly famous name on PES over the last few years, he was magnificent for me in my Master League team back then. Sadly, nearly everybody else was magnificent too. After a few months I made the discovery about next-gen PES2008 that other, much better players than I had made almost immediately: it really was possible to dribble the full length of the field and score with almost any player. On Top Player difficulty.

I made a half-hearted stab at another ML career with House Rules enabled, but I could no longer take the game seriously. It just wasn’t PES. I moved on (or back) to the PSP & PS2 version of the game, which still features the faithful old ‘classic’ gameplay that made PES what it was (and what it will be again—I still have faith in PES2009).

Kaiser popped up again in my ‘retro’ Master League a good few seasons ago now. I could have snapped him up at the age of 17, but chose not to. I didn’t want the reminder of next-gen PES2008, and at the time I was more than happy with Camacho and Bradley and co. (I still am more than happy with them.) Kaiser is in his late 20s now, in season 2019, and is tearing up trees with Real Madrid. Overall, Madrid are a mediocre outfit in my ML, but Kaiser is a major star for them.

They were my next opponents in the league—and, well, my opening spiel about Kaiser probably gives the game away. I scored early, as I so often do. But I couldn’t hold onto the lead, as so often happens to me as well—especially in the final third of the season, for some reason. I don’t notice myself playing any worse in the final third of seasons than in the first two thirds. Do I smell the whiff of macro-scripting? I’ll leave that question for another day.

Kaiser scored a dazzling hat-trick in the second half. The final score was 4-2 to Madrid. I think that’s the first time they’ve beaten me in this way for ten seasons. I’m not sure, but it’s something like that. I should still be playing this career when Kaiser retires and reappears as a Regen in about ten seasons from now. I’ll definitely pick him up next time.

It was my second defeat of the campaign. Now that I’m moving towards the business end of the season, it’s time to start making sure I don’t lose ground and let Valencia (still in 2nd place, of course) catch up with and overtake me.

In the 1st leg of the D1 Cup semi-final I played Sevilla and had a routine 2-0 win. The second leg will be a formality (not wishing to tempt Fate or anything…).

The league is the axis of the Treble that I’m keeping my eye on right now. It just feels as if the CPU wants to trip me up, and that I’ve got to really focus and prevent myself tripping up. Next were Real Mallorca, a promoted team and a pretty poor team judging by the league table. Uh-oh…

It’s teams like Real Mallorca that can be the hardest to play against in Master League under certain conditions. Under current conditions, I sensed a potential stitch-up. And it kind of was a stitch-up… I took the lead and created numerous opportunities to put the game out of sight, but couldn’t take any of them. It was the usual litany of supernatural goalkeeping, wasteful star strikers, and magnetic woodwork. Towards the end of the second half Mallorca started enjoying long spells of assisted possession around my box—the kind of possession where loose balls continually fell their way, never mine. Their goal came in the 89th minute—I looked at the clock, nodding grimly. 1-1 it ended.

I felt aggrieved, but that’s the nature of the PES beast nowadays. Yes, I yearn for what feels like the good old days of PES3 and before, when such scripting—if it even existed back then—was subtle and unnoticed.

The random numbers cruncher at the dark heart of PES2008 threw me a great fixture to start season 2012: Chelsea away.

I groaned at first, then I realised it was an early Championship six-pointer (hopefully). If I’m not challenging for the title this season it’ll be because of carelessness. Better to get this game out of the way while the team is still fresh and hungry.

Having Jansen and Kaiser in the team seems to have made an instant difference. Jansen is marginally the best left-back I’ve played with yet (he’s only just better than Braafheid), but that difference is enough. Jansen was stopping everything down the left side, and making dangerous runs forward.

Kaiser is strong, reasonably quick, and sublimely skilful. Within the first 15 minutes of the game starting, he’d created two good chances and had one himself. Then he went one better, going on a nice little run to score his debut goal and my first goal of the season:

Shortly after, he was kind enough to get another goal - a scuffed kind of shot from the edge of the box - that made it 0-2 to me at half time. Schwarz nodded in the third from a corner late in the second half.

And that was that. Chelsea hardly had a shot on goal. I’m top of the league by goal difference after one game. I am satisfied with how season 2012 is going so far…