The 2019 season is almost here and it’s time to discuss my attitude towards Regens in Master League. At this stage of a career the established players who populated the game at the beginning all start to retire. I’m thinking of the likes of Rooney, Torres, Gerrard, Kaka—all among the very best players that the game has to offer. Lots of PES players forbid themselves from having Regens or Classic players

My policy on Regens and Classic players is simple: I’m allowed to have them. Next-gen PES2008 and a certain Mr Elcherino apart, they’re not overpowered for me in ‘original’ PES and they never have been. I’m only an average PES player and the Regens don’t ruin my game—they enhance it. Part of the fun of playing an ML career indefinitely all year, as I do, is bearing witness to the comings and goings of the great players. When Rooney retires—as he will in the next few seasons—and returns as a 17-year-old, will he be as good or better than he was the first time around? In my experience, the Regens are usually better, because you get the opportunity to develop them from the start of their new career or soon afterwards. That’s if you can get them as soon as they regenerate, of course.

You have to keep a close eye on the Youth list to catch the Regens you want as soon as they regenerate. Otherwise an AI club will swoop in for them and you’ll end up having to pay a king’s ransom further down the line. But sometimes that’s okay. If I’ve got a large squad and I’m always playing big games, a raw 17-year-old won’t get many appearances. Often it’s more efficient to let a young player develop at another club for a few seasons before trying to get him. By this stage of an ML career, money is usually no object.

Thierry Henry was sitting in the Non-Affiliated list just waiting to be picked up. He’s 20 years old. Obviously he must have popped up as a Regen a few seasons ago and I somehow missed seeing him (which was very sloppy of me). The peculiar thing is that no AI club snapped him up, which is what usually happens to the great Regens. Never mind. I was happy to find him waiting for me to give him a home.

Another striker I picked up, albeit on a ‘proper’ transfer, was a 24-year-old Christian Vieri. This player was a semi-legend for me back in the halcyon days of PES5. He’s only young at the moment and looking good again. I offered his club Shevchenko+a few thousand points for him, and of course they took my offer. Shevchenko was disappointing for me. He always seemed rather lightweight on the ball, and he lacked his legendary pace. In a game where every great attacking player has got explosive pace, Shevchenko just seemed rather ordinary. Maybe next time, Andriy.

Back in the Non-Affiliated list (I do flit around among these lists during a transfer period) I found a quality centre-back called Runzal, and added him to my squad. Last season I just felt I was conceding too easily too often. I still don’t know what is at greater fault, my carelessness or the more open, attacking play of PES2008. It’s probably a mix of both, but a top-quality extra CB won’t hurt.

Back in the Youth list proper, I couldn’t see any legends reborn. So I located and got a couple of solid old PES names—Chivu and Caracciolo. Chivu will be a good replacment for Roberto Carlos at LB when the latter eventually ages and declines, as he will inevitably do at some stage. Caracciolo was a great striker for me on next-gen PES2008—yes, yes, yes, everyone is a great striker on the shallow next-gen PES2008, but I’m curious to see how the big man performs here in a classic PES. These two are both 17, so their opportunities in the coming few seasons will be limited. I will try to play them whenever I feel I can get away with it, though.

Regarding my First XI, it’s time to make a long-overdue decision. Kim Cyun Hi has to go and sit on the bench, at least for now. He’s been a very good striker but, for me, hardly the prodigious talent that other PES players have found him to be. I suppose it comes down to differing play-styles as well as a certain random element within individual Master League careers. I’m sure Kim will be an excellent stand-in striker when called upon, as he often will be.

Schwarz therefore returns to his natural role in the centre of my strikeforce. Thinking back across all the PES years, I’ve always played with a big man in the middle of my front three. The last few seasons with Kim Cyun Hi in that position have been exceptions. So I’m going back to my roots.

Del Piero has now got too good to be left out of the First XI. He’s 24 right now in my Master League, and a true phenomenon. Leaving him out of my First XI now would be a crime against Pro Evolution Soccer. He’s not a natural CF but he’s always played superbly there when required. I’ll pick him in place of Andy Cole, who also drops to the bench.

Giggs is irreplaceable out there on the left. I’ve always regarded Stoichkov in PES3 as the best left-sided striker I’ve ever played with in PES, but Giggs could take that crown. It’ll be another few seasons before I can be sure, but the boy is a real wonder.

Back in the centre of defence, Couto has been good but not great. Runzal, my new CB, is statistically worse than Couto, but I want to develop Runzal, so in he comes.

I had to release some players. I had no further need for Larsson, Jong-a-Pin, and Laurito. This leaves my squad at a very healthy 28 players. I think this is the optimum number necessary for what will be a very ambitious season 2019.

In 2019 I want to win the Treble, and last the whole league season unbeaten, and concede less than 20 goals. We’ll see how all of that goes…

Season 2016 was a good one. I won the Treble—League, Cup, European Cup—but it left me unsatisfied for a lot of reasons.

Number one was that I felt I shouldn’t have won the Treble. I messed up the start of the league season and should never have been able to overtake the CPU team at the top. When PES indulges in macro-scripting, it’s often not very subtle about it.

What does it all mean for season 2017 and beyond? It means that I now want to win a proper Treble. I want to win it in style. I want to dominate in the league and win it comfortably. I’d like one of my players to take the Golden Boot (my early money’s on Andy Cole to do that). I also want to move my team up to #1 in the overall club rankings. I can’t believe Barcelona are at #1. They’ve done nothing of note in this Master League. Nothing.

After several negotiations periods where I didn’t get any new players, I felt that I should at least have a look for some. My squad is great—some of my players are at the very top of their game and could be described as brilliant—but overall things feel a little stale. Also, I do have some lightweights. A couple of my players never seem to get a game and remain underused and underdeveloped. Larsson in particular—a great PES striker—has suffered from lack of use. On the odd occasions throughout the seasons when international callups, injuries, and fatigue have forced me to use him, I’ve found him to be a player of low ability compared to the rest of my team. It shows, sometimes painfully.

I’d like to offload Larsson, and by this stage Donk, for some replacements with considerably better stats. Money is certainly no object. Even after my mammoth wages bill is taken into account, I’ve got a staggering 150,000+ points to play with, as the blurry picture shows. Could I get it up to 1,000,000 before PES2009 comes out? I think I could. (But would it go up to 1,000,000? I don’t think there’s room for another digit there.)

I called up the list of All Players, and sorted according to the Attack stat. I was pleased to note that I already had most of the top-rated players in my squad. Shaw was the top-rated according to Attack. I’d never managed to get him despite many years of trying. He’s 25 now, and still just young enough for it to be worth getting him. If I leave it any longer he’ll be in decline.

I forget which club he was at. It wasn’t one of the big ones—it was somebody like Parma. Whoever it was, I offered them 40,000 points plus Larsson. I offered Shaw himself a salary of 3000 points, eight hundred more than my next-best-paid player, Schwarz. I thought I was bound to get Shaw. I’d just won the Treble. My club ranking was second only to Barcelona. There was no reason why he wouldn’t come, surely?

He wouldn’t come. Or his club wouldn’t deal. I don’t know which it was. (Another innovation I’d love to see in PES2009: detailed reasons why transfer bids break down.) What should I amend for my next offer? The points offered, the player offered, the salary offered, what? There was no way of knowing for sure.

So I played safe and bumped up the points on offer to the maximum possible. 59,999. I don’t know why you can’t offer any more points than that. 59,999 seems a pretty arbitrary figure to me. If it’s limited to five digits, why not 99,999? Anyway, I offered Larsson in part exchange again, and this time I offered Shaw 3500 salary points. And once again it was all refused.

I gave up at that point. I was also trying for a couple of other players as well. The excellent Bos would have been a welcome addition to my defence, but he turned his nose up at all offers. Khumalo wouldn’t come for any money. Nobody wanted to come to me. I don’t know what it was, and I didn’t care to find out. I skipped all the remaining negotiations weeks. To hell with them. I’ve got a great squad anyway. Larsson can still be built up into a great player. I played my one pre-season friendly, against Rangers (a 1-1 draw), and moved onto the season proper.

On the First XI front, it’s time for Andy Cole to become an automatic first choice. He’s just too good. He’s not just a handy goal-poacher, as he was in real-life (when he was in the right mood). He’s also fast, skilful, and unerringly just there, in the right place, at the right time, to get crucial goals. I think he could win the Golden Boot in this coming season. We shall see.

Kim Cyun Hi moves to his natural position of central striker. There’s a sense in which Kim Cyun Hi is on trial for me this season. He came highly recommended, but so far I’ve only seen flashes. He is still very young, and probably has yet to fully mature. When he’s been great for me, he’s been great for me down the middle, and he’ll get a full season to prove his worth.

Dropping Schwarz to the bench for the sake of Kim Cyun Hi might seem a bit foolhardy, but it’s a bit of a no-brainer for me. As good as Schwarz is (and he’s very good), I just never seem to get the best out of him. He scores a lot fewer goals than I think he should. And I can see that Kim Cyun Hi, if used correctly, is a striker more in keeping with my pass-and-move style of play.

Otherwise I’m making no changes to the First XI. It’s largely a cosmetic selection anyway, as ever. Very few games will see this exact team take to the field. Over on the left of midfield, I did look long and hard at Dos Santos. He’s 28 now and his best years are almost behind him. However, I don’t have any other dedicated left-footed AMFs in my squad (something to shop for in the mid-season), so he keeps his place for now.

Game 1 of season 2016. This was a tough, tough game. I hope this game wasn’t a taste of things to come for me this season, because if it was then I may have to check myself into a psychiatric hospital for the duration. I’m sure they don’t allow PES on mental wards. I’m also pretty sure they dont like mental wards being called mental wards nowadays, but ho hum, whatever.

Heracles Almelo are one weird team. I’d never heard of them before starting this Master League career in PES2008 and meeting them in my first season in Division 1. Turns out that in real life (if there even is such a thing), they’re a team that plays in the Dutch league. I was amazed to discover that there are still teams that I’ve never heard of playing in the top flights across all the European leagues. Still, I bet that even Fabio Capello had never heard of the likes of Reading FC before he landed the England job. I’m drifting here. What was I talking about? Oh yes.

I was pretty confident when I saw that Heracles were my first opponents. I was wrong to be confident. As every Master League player knows to his cost, the teams that trip you up aren’t the Barcelonas, the Liverpools, and the AC Milans. The teams that really make life painful for you are the Boltons, the Spartak Moscows, and the Heracles Almelos of this parallel footballing world.

And so it went. The game was tortuous. It was attritional. It was grim and gritty. It was one of those games where neither team—human or CPU—seems to have a shot on goal, ever. Play is focused in midfield and in front of the two penalty areas. These are rare games in PES, especially once you’ve assembled a good team in Master League; then you can pretty much bank on having ten, twenty, or thirty shots on goal in every game, compared to the CPU’s relative handful of attempts. But sometimes there are games where that just doesn’t happen, where both teams limp into half-time with roughly two shots each, all off-target. I have roughly one such game every season. This game was it. (Hopefully this game was it…)

The second half? What second half? It was like the first, only worse, if that’s even possible. Admittedly there were more shots on goal from both teams. I was more dangerous down the wings—but no crosses ever found strikers, no shots ever troubled the backs of nets, and all keepers and defenders were on top form.

Heading toward the 90th minute I reflected that a 0-0 result in game 1 of the season wasn’t a disaster. It was a good result compared to what could happen (losing). So I’d accepted a 0-0 in my soul, and was seeing out time, when I broke through with Kim Cyun Hi on the right.

He’d been awful all game. Him and Giggs, and Schwarz—all of them absolutely terrible. Dos Santos had been my most threatening attacker. The strikers had been absolutely awful.

I got Kim to the byline and sent over a cross. The Heracles defenders cleared, but not very well, and I collected the ball with Bradley in midfield. Expecting the final whistle to go at any second, I considered letting fly with a 50-yard howitzer attempt on goal, but decided to look for a pass… One sharp through-ball to Schwarz later, and he was clear through on goal with just the keeper to beat. I didn’t pause to think. If you pause to think, you’re dead—or you’ve missed the goal, which amounts to the same thing in PES. I slotted the ball past the Heracles keeper and into the net. It was literally the last kick of the game. The final whistle seemed to go before Heracles kicked off in the centre circle. Yes. Yes. YES!