PES Chronicles

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 12: year 2020-2021. Is it just me who fully expects the real world in 2020-2021 to be ruled by motorcycle gangs and cannibal cults?

I’m very happy to be at this stage in PES2010. In the PS2 era it was routine for me to get this far—and usually further. After the last two years I never thought it could happen in a next-gen PES2010, but I’m delighted that it is happening now.

PES2010 is a great PES game in my opinion. It’s getting up there towards classic PES, for me. If I was in the business of handing out review-style scores now, I’d settle for 9/10. Easily. It’s hideously flawed in some areas, as a quick glance at any PES forum will soon tell you, but it’s still great. In that respect, it’s no different from the classic PES games that we look back upon with the marvellous rose-tinted spectacles of hindsight… Every past PES game has had annoying, embarrassing flaws. Remember PES5’s auto-stepover that would concede throw-ins? For just one example.

I think what’s changed in the PES community is a decreased tolerance for the flaws. PES2008 gave us a taste for critiquing PES, and it’s been open season ever since. FIFA08 was a serious football game and provided PES with a worthy competitor for the first time. The full story has yet to be written—the end of this console generation and the beginning of the next, whenever that may be, will provide a useful juncture to examine what’s happened to PES (and to PES fans) in this generation in more detail. But, for now, we’re living through this difficult period, and thus we can’t quite see it properly yet.

Setting aside all pretentious would-be theorising, the fact is that I am playing PES2010. I am enjoying Master League more deeply than I’ve enjoyed any other since PES5. I’m happy to go on playing it indefinitely. Season 12, let’s get started…

I have reverted to my stripey home kit of two seasons ago, with a slight difference. Instead of sky blue and white stripes, I’ve gone for two shades of blue. This home kit is now the permanent template for every season. Only minor colour changes will take place for the foreseeable future. My away kits will still change every season. The new away kit has been changed since the picture was taken. Those white shorts simply weren’t working out. I’ve changed them to black. Sorry about that, white shorts fans.

On the cashflow front I was £30m in credit at the start of the transfer window. I raised all my staff levels up to level 5. I spent £5m on skill cards. I stayed out of the transfer market after looking around but not really finding anyone I was keen enough to go after. Mathieu is currently 36 years old and about to retire at Valencia. I’ll watch out for his Regen next season.

I trimmed my squad by a few players. I sold Minanda, Voavy, and Espimas, who all brought in £5.5m combined—so that was the skill cards paid for. This is my first major splurge on skill cards. I bought a few for a couple of players last season but saw no major differences on the pitch. Sazi, if anything, has declined in ability. Or is that just my perception now that other, better players have slotted in around him?

Needless to say, I came into season 12 hoping to win the Treble. But it’s gone straightaway. I’ve been eliminated from the D1 Cup in the 1st round. That’s the Treble gone for another season—already out of reach. Damn! How could I have been so careless? Next season, season 13, I really will have to be more careful. All I can say in my defence is that Manchester City (them again) were pretty formidable in the first leg. Although I tried my best in the second leg, it wasn’t to be.

I lost my opening league match, at home, against a surprisingly tough Rangers FC—newly-promoted and obviously fired up at the sight of my hooped shirts. They beat me 0-2. One of their goals was that most infuriating of PES types: the one where the ball runs loose in a crowded penalty box and your players won’t do anything, won’t respond to any button presses, for just long enough to let an AI player pinch the ball and score.

A 4-1 win at home in my next match steadied the ship. I’m doing very well in the league, and suddenly scoring lots of goals. 23 goals in 11 matches is the joint-second-highest in the league, behind only a scarily resurgent Tottenham.

The key to my scoring spree is Munitis (pictured left). He’s scored 11 of my 23 goals and is top of the top scorers’ list. He might look as if he should be playing the banjo in a trailer park, but on the pitch he’s shaping up to be my most important left-footed striker since Hristo Stoichkov on PES3 (a fond memory indeed).

Perhaps the greatest thing about Munitis is that none of his goals seem to be anything special. They’re all ‘right place, right time’ finishes from 8 yards, or headers from corners that scramble over the line somehow. This is exactly what I need.

Below is a short clip showing two goals from this opening part of this season. First is a poacher’s side-footed finish from Munitis, following some sharp build-up play. Second is a traditional long-distance screamer from Sazi, which is uncannily like one of my old FIFA09 distance goals—fired into the opposite corner whilst running diagonally:

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In Europe I’m in a fairly weak group (on paper). I’ve won my opening two fixtures against Nancy Lorraine (what a gal) and Atalanta. Basel 1893 look as if they’ll offer my main competition in the group, and they’re up next.

All in all, I’m very happy with my PES life at the moment. Fumbling the Treble (yet again) right at the start of this season is only a minor blow. The bigger picture is one of intense involvement and enjoyment in Master League. Just the way it should be, really.

Season 10 has concluded in the way it seemed destined to from the start: I have won the Division 1 championship. I was very happy. I’m still very happy now. It’s been a long old slog getting to this point—seven hard seasons of graft in the lower division, followed by a tricky adjustment to the top flight. Winning the title now has come along at just the right time. I’m ready to start challenging for more trophies. I’m looking forward to taking my team into the Champions League. This title win—my first trophy in PES2010’s Master League—now opens up a whole new level of competition. I can go for the Treble!

Here’s the final Division 1 table in full:

As seen last time, my position heading into the final few matches was a very healthy one. Really all I had to do was keep doing what I’d been doing all season, and the title would be mine. I could even afford a few slip-ups. As it turned out, the slip-ups never came (not until after I’d won the title anyway—more on that later).

It turned out that the truly decisive games came against Birmingham and then Sunderland. Against Birmingham I went ahead 1-0. And they scored an auto-goal from the kick-off to equalise. I absolutely hate it when this happens in PES2010. It often feels literally impossible to me to stop the AI scoring. When it’s an AI kick-off I already put the ATT/DEF levels on full defence, and also employ the strategy button ‘All-out Defence’ option, but it does no good. Nothing has any effect when the AI really wants to score. I know, I know: I need to defend better and try not to double-sprint-pressure (or clamp) my way out trouble. I’ll crack it one day.

I came back to win the Birmingham game with a very untidy, scrambled goal not long before the end. There were only a few matches left and I was five points clear in first place.  A win in my next match against Sunderland, and the title was mine. Sunderland have been a bogey team for me in next-gen PES. I won, though, with a few standard goals from standard attack patterns that felt so very, very good to score.

The run-in was enlivened by the occurrence of two similar long-range goals in the same match, one after the other. They’re at the start of the short clip below. It also shows my team’s title-clinching celebrations after the Sunderland game. Right at the end of the following clip is an AI goal scored against me by my final opponents of the season, the already-relegated and now invincible Bolton Wanderers. They turned up with absolutely nothing to play for, but played like the greatest team ever, and thumped me 4-1. Their fourth goal is the one included at the end. Smiling at my ‘defending’ is allowed…

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Also notable in the clip is a moment during my team’s locker-room celebrations. My created player, not-Greg, the team captain (of course) clearly decides he’s fed up of the whole scene. He walks away from the celebration without so much as a by-your-leave. It made me laugh out loud at first viewing because it’s eerily close to exactly how I would be in a situation like that in real life. Sure, lads, I’ll jump up and down like a girl with you for a few moments, but then I’m OUT of here…

And so onto season 11. And my first attempt at the Treble.

Finally for this season, I have a compilation of every goal scored by me during the campaign. That’s every single one. I was knocked out of the Cup in the second round. The goals I scored in the first round appear near the start of this video. The rest are all league goals.

As will be seen, I do score plenty of goals that aren’t long-range screamers. PES2010 continues the proud tradition of enabling many routes to goal. Throughout the movie, there are only two occasions when two similar goals follow one another: once, as we have already seen above, with two long-rangers in the same match; and another time when I scored two almost identical side-footed finishes against West Ham. I think this is an intriguing video, and it’s an experiment I will be carrying out again in a few seasons’ time, possibly including every AI goal as well. I hope you enjoy.

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February? I’ve said it before, but—what is happening to time lately? Weren’t we greeting the arrival of PES2010 and FIFA10 just last week or something?

Now it won’t be too long—two months? three months?—before the buildup to the 2011 games begins. The World Cup this year may alter the publicity calculus a little. Will Konami and EA start the hype earlier or later than usual? They could go either way, I suppose. A lot depends on whether they’ve got a World Cup game to promote as well. We know that EA definitely will have a WC game.

When the PES2011 and FIFA11 hype machine does get going, certain things are guaranteed. We’ll see underwhelming screenshots. Then there’ll be the now-traditional, utterly pointless FMV video of Messi or somebody doing a trick or—if we’re lucky—tricks. Plural! Why do football game makers insists on trailing everything about a football game EXCEPT what we most want to see—i.e., ordinary gameplay? Why must we sit through several months of flicks and tricks and nutmegs and lollipops and crap like that, instead of seeing (for example) just a few seconds of ordinary gameplay, say a passing move through midfield leading to a standard shot on goal? Does any other game genre gloss over its core experience so thoroughly for so long during its pre-release cycle?

Anyway. Season 10 in my Master League. PES2010. Here and now.

Last time, I was lightheaded at being top of the table and looking fairly good after 12 matches. Here we go with the next stage of the season. I’ve played another 10 matches, and I’ve passed through the mid-season transfer window.

I experimented with a new formation. 4-3-3 has been my favoured formation in PES for 10 years now (where does that time go?). But this year I’ve found goals harder to come by than before, and it is with regret that I finally acknowledged the 4-3-3—with wide AMFs, and widely-spaced CFs—has run its course. I needed an alternative.

I played 5 of the next 10 matches using a 4-5-1 (pictured left) and then with a version of 4-4-2. The experiment did not go well.

I lost 3 and drew 2—my worst run for a few seasons. I scored just 1 goal in those 5 matches. My rise up the table has been built on pass and move, patience, and being willing to defend 1-0 leads for long periods. With the new formation, I couldn’t pass, could barely move, and I seemed to be defending all the time anyway, whatever the circumstances. Everything that had hoisted me up to the top of the table felt missing. There was no flow.

I had to take remedial action before my fledgling title challenge was seriously compromised. (As it was, I’d do well to recover.) I soon went back to a version of 4-3-3, albeit one tempered by my experiences. The new formation can be seen below at the top of the new squad picture. It handles very much like a 4-5-1 at times, with lots of bodies in midfield. Although it looks narrow, in practice it doesn’t play that way. I adjusted my sliders to favour width. My players seem to go wide when I want them wide, and go narrow when I want them narrow. I had instant success with the new 4-3-3, to counterbalance the poor results. I’m still a bit short on goals, though. The 4-5-1 experiment is by no means over. Long-term, I believe I’ll settle for a 4-4-2 with a diamond midfield. For now I’ve got the above 4-5-1 mapped to a strategy button, and I still activate it for long periods when I feel I need to calm a game down.

My possession stats lately have been extraordinary. In one match against River Plate I had 75% possession at half-time, but ended the match with ‘only’ 69%—and I conceded a typical late goal. But that’s PES for you.

In mid-season I indulged in quite a bit of activity. I bought yet another WF/SS hybrid player, SCOKLANT, for a few hundred thousand. I got rid of my calamity goalkeeper, Jan Kun Mu, who brought in £1.5m. I replaced him with a lanky Free Agent keeper called ZUBERBUHLER, who I negotiated with back in the first weeks of the season. He’s been great since his arrival.

Also in the Free Agents list I found a CF, 85 OVR, named ZAKI… I’ve had nothing but great players from the Free Agents list recently. Why do I even need to look at the proper transfer market? Is this a slight flaw in the new Master League? Only more time will tell. As I (hopefully) get more successful and accumulate more money over the next few seasons, I’ll be able to buy top players on the regular transfer market—if I want to.

The failed experiment with 4-5-1 cost me a few league places, but look here: after 22 matches, almost 2/3rds of the season, I’m still in 4th place, and just 2 points behind the leaders. After everything that’s happened in this long old career, I’ve got to be happy with that. And I am happy.