PES Chronicles

And just like that, it was all over. The Treble is gone, and maybe the title too.

I’m out of both Cups and I don’t think I can win the league title this season. With 9 matches left in the season, I’m 12 points adrift. Porto are dominant once more:

Unless the game really pulls out all the stops and lets me catch up, I won’t win a single thing this season. What happened?

The collapse started after I lost my main striker, Zaki, to injury. It was just before the transfer window, and I slapped in bids for 5 talented young Regen strikers: Forlan, Morientes, Crespo, Owen, and Van Nistelrooy. Morientes was the first to respond—and the deal was on! The price was high, but I didn’t think twice. I needed a special striker. I bought him for £26,000,000. This was from my entire budget of £28,000,000. I recouped most of it almost immediately by selling my young DMF, Clement, for £23,000,000. That was a (suspiciously timely) relief. I’d have really struggled to pay all the bills at the end of the season otherwise.

Morientes, a Regen, is currently aged 22 and rated 86 OVR. His first few games were unremarkable, but he got a few goals in his next few games. And after that I struggled to score any goals with any player at all for a run of about 10 matches. It was a critical period in which to suffer a goal drought.

I just couldn’t score. Nothing would happen. Typically my match stats were something like 15-20 shots on goal, with 7-10 of them on target. I swear I hit the post/crossbar at least twice in about five matches running.

It all cost me dearly. In the D1 Cup I battled my way through to the semi-final and played Manchester United. They battered me in the first leg at my place. I lost 0-2. At their place I needed an early goal, but I got nothing. This game is very good at smothering the life out of you when it’s in the mood to do so, and it was in the mood. I lost that away leg 1-0. It was 3-0 on aggregate. And that was that.

It was a spookily similar tale in the Champions League. For the fourth season in a row I was up against French opposition in the second round. This time it was Lyon. The first leg at my place ended 0-0. I thought that was a good result. One goal at their place would effectively win me the tie—that’s the power of the away goal. But I didn’t get it. They got two goals, instead, and won 2-0.

I was, and am, shell-shocked at the collapse of my season after I lost Zaki to injury. It’s all a perfect model of what can happen when a team loses a key player and fails to deal with it. Could this game, this much-maligned PES2010, really be so finely tuned? Or is it all down to me? Is it all psychological, nothing but a self-fulfilling prophecy—a manifestation of my deepest fears about what losing Zaki would mean for my season?

Whatever the case, at least Zaki is now back. His injury lasted three in-game months. I have checked his stats and he doesn’t seem to have lost anything. He’s still 81-rated. For these last 9 matches I’ve reinstalled him as my main central striker. (Morientes’ time will come—at the moment he feels a little unfinished.)

All I’ve got left to go for is the league title. It’s probably way out of reach—but with Master League, you never know.

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.

I had an excellent start to season 13, but then suffered a peculiar run of league matches. I kept losing 1-0, two in a row at one point. Then I drew 0-0, then lost 1-0 again. I didn’t score at all for about five matches. This was all in one particular session of play, I might add. PES has always had this session-to-session change in character. It’s nothing new. Talk of gameplay patches—lacking official confirmation of such—is and always has been misplaced, IMO. Speaking of myths…

I stormed to the top spot in my Champions League group, qualified easily, and I had the luxury of playing Castolo from the start in both of the last two matches. That’s invaluable experience for a youngster, but every time I play with Castolo I wonder why I’m bothering. Of course, I’m bothering because of the myth of Castolo.

How goes Project Castolo? Not too well. Nursing him through his brief appearances is a mini-game in its own right. It’s as if the burger van man has been given a kit and told to go out and play. He’s gained a few points of OVR rating. His turning speed and first touch and general movement are all terrible. He plays like a twat, really.

I was never under pressure in either of Castolo’s full matches and so I never needed him to be more than he was, which I suppose was adequate. He got an assist for a goal in the second match. I’ve also brought him on as sub a lot in the league. He actually appears on the pitch a lot more than some of my  mature squad members. As I’ve said before, I want to see some tangible results sooner rather than later. I won’t keep Castolo for longer than 5 seasons. One thing I might do after the end of this season is splurge some money on skill cards for him. That could help. But I’ll only do this if I’ve got money to burn after taking care of regular business, i.e., my staff and player salaries and any transfers I can pull off.

In the league, I went on the customary winning run. It was only punctuated by a frustrating Man Utd tie that I seemed fated to lose 0-1 (again), and did.

I’ve played several more matches than is shown here. I’m comfortably ahead in the table, 6 or 7 points clear. It’s my title to lose.

Here are a couple of goals from the current phase of league games. The first is a waspish finish from my created player, not-Greg, that clatters in off the post and bar—it was a late winner and it meant a lot. The second is a sweet volley from Nakamura that I tried to post on Twitter the other night, but somehow it vanished into the ether on the way:

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The mid-season transfer window has been and gone. I picked up two players, first an experienced DMF called Clement (85OVR) who’s a bit like Mathieu, albeit without the shooting prowess. Second was a Youth teamster called Jaromton. He’s a CF, currently rated 64OVR, and he’s already everything that Castolo is not, i.e., good. He handles well and has already got a few goals in a couple of appearances, unlike Castolo, who struggles to stand upright a lot of the time.

In the Champions League, the draw for the Second Round has been made. That confused me for a start. I thought the Champions League goes from a group stage straight into the Quarter Finals? There’s no last 16 stage in reality, is there? Is this more Japanese eccentricity, or is it me failing to notice?

Anyway, the draw paired me with… Stade Rennais. I’m terrified. This is not a joke. Last season I was dumped out by RC Lens. The season before, by FC Sochaux. These minor French teams are my Champions League Kryptonite. Friday’s post will have the whole story.

Whew. First of all: the AI has scored yet another amazing flicked goal against me (see the end of this post). Second of all: I have won the Division 1 title again.

That’s now three Division 1 titles in succession. Does this have any implications for the future of PES2010 and me? Is the notorious difficulty curve starting to flatten out? It’s too early to tell. For me, the main criterion that makes a PES too easy is how quickly I can win a Treble, and then whether I can win the Treble every season without much effort. That stage hasn’t materialised in PES2010—not yet anyway—and I hope it never will. In theory, I could win the title every season from now until the end of time and I still wouldn’t necessarily think things were getting a bit easy. The Treble is still a long way out of sight.

PES2010 made it tight until the end of the season. This is a venerable Master League tradition. A ‘rubberband AI’ setup in the league table will ensure that things remain close until the end. If you’re trailing behind, the teams above you will lose and draw just enough times to keep you interested; if you’re the one who’s up on top of the league, you’ll lose and draw just enough to keep the AI teams in the hunt. This effect varies with your own native ability, of course, but it’s been a definite part of Master League since it came into being. I don’t really like it, but anyway. Whatever. I could always ‘go play FIFA’ (which has much the same ‘feature’ in its career mode’s leagues)…

Here’s the final table:

The shenanigans all started with a fixture against the second-placed team, Manchester United. They’d been my closest challengers for the top spot. I was 5 points ahead with about 6 matches to go. As an ML veteran, I knew that I was foredoomed to lose this game. Yes, it could be argued that this perception—this fixed belief—contributed more than anything else to me losing the match—and I did lose it.

I lost it 1-4, at home, an unheard-of result for me this season. I was fortunate to get a goal back when Man Utd were only 0-1 up. The remainder of the game was a catalogue of stumbles, misplaced passes, and shots that skewed crazily wide. I hit the post and crossbar three times. Meanwhile Man Utd were making hay up front, and had streaked into a three-goal lead by the time the final whistle blew.

That left me 2 points ahead with 5 matches remaining, and from that point it was nip and tuck all the way to the finishing line. I had to stay ahead on points. My goal difference was good—I’ve had my best-ever goalscoring season—but Man Utd’s was better.

I lost and drew just enough of the remaining matches to ensure that the final match would be appropriately tension-filled. I won the final match, and as it happened Man Utd lost theirs.

All in all season 12 has been a bumpy ride on the League front, but I still got there and took the crown. Three in a row now. What a shame I can’t seem to get myself together yet in either of the Cup compeititons. There is a hidden higher difficulty level once you hit the Champions League knockout stages! I’m sure of it. Incidentally, the Best XI for the Champions League this season year shows how time is really starting to pass in my ML world. Regen Giggs and one or two others are familiar names, but the rest are alien to me.

I was disappointed not to take the top scorer title with Munitis. Here’s how the race for the Golden Boot turned out:

After a promising start, Munitis faded slightly from mid-season on. It was a definite slump that suspiciously coincided with me purchasing two skill cards for him. I don’t like ‘em, you know, these skill cards… But the jury is still out.

I am insanely wealthy in the game now. The screenshot on the left was taken immediately after I was awarded £15m for winning the title. With sponsorship money I’ve actually got over £82,000,000 now.

I could buy so many great players, but none of them will come to me. I will keep trying, but I suspect I’ll need to win a Cup or two before the biggest big names will sign up.

Season 13 is next, and I’m not even slightly jaded with PES2010 yet. I still want to go on and play more.

Finally today, another stylish flicked goal from the AI. The first one I posted was something special—this one is incredible:

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