My Division 1 Cup semi-final opponents were Real Madrid. They’d held me to a 0-0 at home in the first leg, but in the second leg I beat them 0-2 at their place. Their phenomenal player, Kaiser, was not on the pitch. If he wasn’t 28 years old in my ML right now, I’d be making it my priority to get Kaiser in the next transfer window. I’ve seen him turn in some truly stunning performances. As it stands I think I’ll maybe pick him up as a Regen after he retires. That could be as long as 12 seasons away—I’ll wait.

In league game 24 I fought out a tough 0-0 draw against Heracles Almelo. It was a blatantly scripted shut-out on the CPU’s part. Possession for me that should have led to goal-scoring chances simply didn’t; goal-scoring chances for me that should have led to goals simply didn’t. One of those games. Chalk it up to PES experience, and move on.

In game 25 I beat Real Mallorca 2-0 to set up game 26. If I won this one, I’d won the League Championship.

The game was against Espanyol, which slightly set the alarm bells ringing. Espanyol are just one of those teams (along with Heracles Almelo and quite a few others) who can often present a stubborn obstacle for no particular reason.

And things did not start well. Vieri was playing as my central CF instead of the fatigued Schwarz. He’s been pretty good for me, has Vieri—whisper it, but at times I think he out-Schwarzes Schwarz. I had no qualms about playing him in such a big game, and was confident his strength would be worth at least one goal up front.

But I had Vieri sent off in the 5th minute. It was for a completely innocuous-seeming tackle in the opposition half of the pitch. As the referee was going through his animation I knew that the card coming out of his pocket would be a red one. It was the kind of foul that’s always worth a yellow card, but seems to get a red card whenever the script wants to make a big game just that little bit harder for you. I went to a 4-3-2 formation and prepared to work hard…

Amazingly, with 10 men, I went on to deliver my best-ever performance whilst short-handed. Giggs is newly-reinstalled back in the AMF slot. He scored a dazzling hat-trick, bursting through from the wing twice, and heading in from a Camacho cross for the third. Burdner, on as a late sub, got the odd goal in a 4-0 win.

And that was the title won. The first and most important element of the Treble has fallen into place.

It’s come early this year. There are still four league games left in the season. I haven’t even played the European Cup semi-final yet. Speaking of which… the first leg of the semi-final is my next fixture, and my opponents are Lazio. A few seasons ago I met them in the final and they were immense, and they beat me; I met them in the final the following season as well and they were curiously lightweight by comparison, and I beat them. The fate of the Treble will be largely decided by which version of Lazio turns up for the semi-final

It was business as usual in my next batch of games in season 2020 of my Master League career. I won several more games in a row (after winning my opening three games) to give myself an almost perfect start to the season. I was top of the league, three points ahead of my nearest challengers, Espanyol.

Hang on… Espanyol? I haven’t even been aware of them for the past several seasons, much less noticed them actually doing anything of note in the league. I think it’s possible that they’ve spent the past season or two in Division 2, and this is their first season back in the top flight. But I’m not sure.

Whatever, the fact that they’re up here now at the start of the season, breathing down my virtual neck at the top of the table, means precisely nothing. Zilch, zip, nada. At the end of the season it’ll be me and Valencia in first and second place at the top of the table, with the next-nearest team in 3rd place about 10 points further behind. That’s the way it’s been for the past 6 seasons and that’s how I expect it to be this season. Over time things will change and other CPU teams will come to the fore, but right now it’s too soon for Espanyol to be considered serious challengers. We’ll see at the end of this season if my prediction holds true.

The undoubted highlight of my second batch of wins was a dazzling hat-trick from Del Piero, playing out on the right up front. As my other great players all get older—Camacho is 30 this year—the comparative youthfulness of players like Giggs, Kim Cyun Hi, and Del Piero gives me hope for the future of my team, regardless of who I end up getting to replace them in a few seasons’ time. I’ve already checked on Gerrard. He’s still an active player for Barcelona, at the age of 40. I don’t think he ever plays for them nowadays, but he’s still on their books. The crazy thing is that his stats still look pretty good for a 40-year-old. Lots of reds and yellows. I’m positive Gerrard will retire at the end of this season, which should mean he’ll pop up as a Regen in the mid-season negotiations next season. (Message to self: do not blithely skip the mid-season 2021 negotiations. Be sure to get the 17-year-old Gerrard. Message ends.)

Del Piero’s 23 now, and plays about as well as I have ever had any player play for me - up to and including PES5’s Bergkamp. It’s too early to start talking about this Del Piero as the best-ever player for me in PES2008 so far. There are at least four ahead of him in the queue for that honour (Camacho, Bradley, Komol, Maldini, a few others). Del Piero’s truly stellar performances are for now pretty unpredictable. But he’s just getting better year after year. His hat-trick was one to die for, with two long-range efforts from wide positions, and a scrambled header from a corner showing that he can mix it up in the penalty area when required.

My winning run just went on and on. As well as my usual aim of winning a Treble, I have a couple of secondary aims as well: go through the whole league season unbeaten, and concede less than 20 goals whilst doing so. I’ve tried to do that for the last few seasons and come close, but never quite made it on either front. I’m going for those secondary goals again this season.

All I have to do is keep taking the lead in games, and winning them—and the unbeaten run, obviously, will take care of itself. It’s when I get into the dangerous territory of drawing games that I risk the CPU sneaking a winner.

Happily I kept playing well until game 9, winning them all. It was one of my best winning runs in Master League. Komol got himself a neat little hat-trick in one game.

Then, in game 9, I encountered the mighty Real Betis. They’re definitely a newly-promoted team, and are riding quite high in the league. That means little at this stage of the season, but I was still wary. They ticked all the ‘upset’ boxes—a lesser name, newly-promoted, doing well in upper-mid-table…

Yes, the ensuing game was a bit of a joke. I know I’m harping on about scripting again, but really, after a certain point it’s the only way the CPU can seriously compete against a human player. And it shows.

I took the lead with a finely crafted strike from the man of the moment, Del Piero. I could and should have put the game beyond any doubt—I acknowledge this. The only way to snuff out the CPU’s God Mode and prevent that famous last-minute equaliser is to get yourself the cushion of two goals, not just one.

But I couldn’t expand on my lead, and as the game moved toward its climax I sensed what was about to happen. Real Betis were playing it around, and frequently squirming through my best tackles.

I hate the whole CPU ’squirm script’. It goes like this: you tackle the CPU player, but he squirms free (sometimes he squirms free from two or three of your players). Then you slide-tackle the same CPU player, and your tackle wins the ball. But your player stands there doing nothing while the ball rolls loose. Sometimes, your player will take a step back to allow the CPU more space to recover the ball. The CPU player—whom you tackled cleanly and successfully—recovers the ball and resumes his unstoppable run toward goal.

After several game minutes of that kind of thing, you know what’s going to happen. It happened: Real Betis got the last-minute equaliser and the game ended 1-1. Yes, I should have scored another goal earlier to make the game safe—but did I miss my chances, or did the game miss them for me? Failing that, I should have just defended better—but what about that whole squirm script?

There seems to be little the human player can do about that. If the game wants to temporarily disable your player(s) to give the CPU an advantage—and there can be no doubt that it does do this—there is manifestly nothing at all for you to do except put up with it.

Never mind. A draw was always going to come along eventually. That league table still makes for good viewing from my perspective.

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.