Last night I had a few games on FIFA09. They were my first games on FIFA09 for about ten days. And I had a great time. It was on the Xbox360 (I’m still waiting for the PS3 patch). I only meant to have one quick game, just to see, but ended up playing two Exhibition games and two games in my Atletico Madrid MM career. I was amazed and enraptured all over again by just how good a football game FIFA09 is. But I was most surprised by being able to slip back into the FIFA09 style of gameplay so easily after all this time playing PES2009.

Several weeks ago when I first tried to switch from one game to the other, I was worried about ‘contamination’ in both directions. Trying to play PES2009 as if it’s FIFA09 and FIFA09 as if it’s PES2009 does both games a great disservice. But last night I barely tried to ‘PES it up’ at all. Later on I did, but that was when I was behind late on in a match, and getting frustrated. I think all of us who ‘grew up’ on ISS/PES will never be able to stop ‘PESing about’ to some degree for the rest of our natural lives, in any football game. (We’ll probably still try to play Space Soccer 2023, or whatever, with our fingers firmly gripping R1…)

FIFA09 is a sublime game. I’m really looking forward to playing it regularly again on my PS3 when the patch comes. And it looks now as if I will be able to play FIFA and PES, together, this year. That initial period of strangeness when it felt impossible for me to play both games might be over.

In a very peculiar and unexpected way, this year might be one of the best possible years to be a football gamer. How strange is that? The win-win thing, finally. It’s still early days yet (I’m thinking about January again) but how strange, and how great, would that be?

——————-

Season 2010-2011 in my PES2009 Master League has come to an inglorious end. After picking up those few extra players in the mid-season negotations, I won a couple of games and things looked rosy. But I haven’t won a game since. The season dribbled to a close with a couple of feeble draws and a final shattering run of six consecutive defeats.

And so I’ll spend another season at least in Division 2. Maybe in the dim and distant ML past I’ve had worse starts to a career, but if I did I don’t remember them. I think this is the worst I’ve ever done. For that reason alone, PES2009 is already a remarkable game.

The one crumb of comfort I can take from this new failure of a season is that my youngsters are starting to blossom. Jackson is turning into a reliable player at CB. His current development isn’t that great, but it’s still coming along nicely. Another season or two and he’ll be a proper defensive giant.

And then there’s Dietrich. A young superstar-in-waiting DMF, he’s just about to start bossing midfields in the manner of great PES DMFs of the past (Mathieu & Bradley & Prieto & co.). I’m expecting great things from him in the future (a few goals would be particularly nice). Here’s a fairly gratuitous picture of Dietrich, appropriately bathed in a celestial glow:

And now here’s this season’s final league table. Yes, it was another bad season, but who’s that team in bottom place?

It’s not COVENTRY CITY in 12th place, that’s for sure. At least I’m off the bottom and things are moving in the right direction. The only way is up…

Not a single win in the first half of my 3rd season in Master League on PES2009. This is not good. This isn’t how things are meant to be. You’re meant to gradually improve, season on season, in Master League. But it seems I’m not getting better—I’m getting worse.

In the last league game before the mid-season negotiations, my opponents were Aston Villa. They got relegated from Division 1 last season. As Nelson Muntz might say: ha-ha… In real life, ’the Villa’ are Coventry City’s traditional derby rivals. FIFA09 seems to think our rivals should be Birmingham City—but no, that’s just plain wrong.

I was pumped up for the game against Villa, despite it all being in my mind. I beat them 1-0 with a late goal. My first win of the season, and what a fixture to get it in.

The final game before mid-season was the first leg of the quarter final of the Divsion 2 Cup. My opponents? Aston Villa, of course. I lost badly, 0-3, at home. The second leg will be just a formality for them.

And so to the all-too-short mid-season negotiations. I was in a poor situation money-wise, but decided to take a risk. I picked up another 3 players from the Youth list.

GAMBINO is an amazingly good SB/SMF. I’ll play him as an AMF, or even as a CF if need be.

CONWEY is just an average-rated, promising-looking CB.

And it was about time, I thought, that I picked up a good young goalkeeper for the future. I had my pick of several decent-looking GKs in the Youth list. The magic of a well-known name swung me towards DUDEK.

All three are 17 years old and will cost me another 1300 salary points at season’s end. This is living very dangerously, but it’s a calculated risk. I’m banking on these acquisitions—GAMBINO in particular—enabling me to pick up  wins and draws that I otherwise wouldn’t have, thus earning extra money, and thus negating any possibility of salary trouble.

And, as a bonus, I also managed to send out two players on loan. LOTHAR and GUTIERREZ went to CPU clubs for a combined fee of 950 points. That relieves the pressure a bit.

I lost my first game after the negotiations period, anti-climactically. It’s always disappointing to lose this one, with all players fit and in form.

But I won the next two games. I played GAMBINO as a striker in the second game and won it 3-1.

Using CAPITAL LETTERS for player names, as PES2009 insists on doing, is contagious. It does make them STAND OUT. I’ll use the convention myself from now on.

PES2009 is destined to frighten me every time I score a few goals in a game, or have what I regard as an easier time of it. I’ll always wonder if it’s about to show its true PES2008-themed colours. After this couple of wins, I’m no longer as worried about paying my end-of-season bills (it’ll still be tight, but I should make it). I’m now more worried about PES2009’s mask slipping, and the ghost of PES2008 coming back to haunt me.

I’ve played all remaining games in my current Master League season on PES2009. There are no ’single-year’ seasons this year. In older PES games you started a Master League in season 2005, say, then the next season was season 2006, followed by season 2007, and so on. In PES2009, the first season is called 2008-2009. And I’ve now finished my second season, 2009-2010.

It’s been a pretty bad season, one of my worst-ever in Master League. First, the positive. Just before the end of the season I enjoyed my one and only victory, a hugely enjoyable 1-3 result at Gothenburg.

As much as I enjoyed the win (and after an otherwise winless season, believe me I enjoyed it), it gave me a certain sinking feeling for a brief moment or two. I’m very suspicious of PES2009 in the post-PES2008 world. I’m permanently on my guard. I’m forever watchful, waiting for the overhwelmingly positive experience that I’ve had over the past couple of weeks to change into a nightmare.

Any sign whatsoever of me playing well or scoring a few goals in PES2009 immediately makes me suspect that this could be the beginning of the end. That I’ll soon be literally running circles around entire CPU teams and scoring hat-tricks for fun, just as in PES2008. I’ve already seen enough of PES2009 to know that this probably won’t happen. But what if PES2009 has its own monsters lurking in the basement? Its own versions of the things that made PES2008 into A Game That Will Live In Infamy?

It does preoccupy me. I think I’ve mentioned the worry, in some form, every day on the blog since I started playing PES2009 again. I won’t be able to shake it off until I’ve grown very familiar with the ins and outs of PES2009. Which means winning Trebles in Master League, of course. How easy or hard that proves to be will ultimately determine how good or bad PES2009 is—for me, of course. This ‘Treble Test’ of a PES game’s worth is an entirely personal thing. Other evaluatory procedures are available…

Okay, enough hand-wringing and fretting about the future for PES2009. How did my current season end?

Badly, as I said. Here’s the final lower end of the table—who’s that at the bottom?

Ouch. Finishing bottom of the league with a W1-D9-L12 record is possibly my worst-ever finish in the second season in any Master League. I did fail to win a single game in my first season on last-gen PES2008. That was the worst worst-ever.

A win percentage of 4.55 is laughable. Even in my first season on Top Player I did better than that.

That final win didn’t do much to improve my transfer funds, really. I’m left with 6000 points in the bank and a 7500 salary bill. Negotiations are next. I’m thinking that pre-season friendlies might come to my rescue here.