My mid-season 2021 signings were: Frank Lampard, John Terry, and Ronaldo. I’ll deal with them in reverse order.

My new Ronaldo is, of course, the currently-chunky Brazilian one. (I’d like to get the other one, the little Portuguese one, at some point, but he’s yet to retire and Regenerate.) My new Ronaldo is as slender as a gazelle and, you know what, he’s pretty damn good. People tend to forget that the real-life Ronaldo, at his peak, was arguably the most talented footballer since Maradona. The last time I had Ronaldo in PES was in PES5, when he was one of my top strikers, as he darn well should have been. I’m expecting him to be pretty special in this one too, although it’ll probably be a few season before I see the best of him. He’s still very young, only 21 years old.

John Terry is a player whom I don’t much like in real life. Before any Chelsea fans get on their high horses, hear me out. I acknowledge his considerable talents as a defender. It’s as an all-round footballer in the game that I have issues with him. John Terry is one of the most obnoxious characters in football right now. Who is it who chases after referees and shrieks at them the most? Yep, JT and his posse.

And another thing. John Terry was one of the so-called ‘golden generation’ of English footballers who disastrously flopped at the 2006 World Cup. Despite what England’s tabloid newspapers might have you believe, nobody in England really believed that England would go to Germany and come home with the World Cup. No.

All that I and everybody I know hoped for was that the team would perform well, play some exciting football, give us something to cheer, and perhaps get to the semi-final at best. Certainly England had the players to compete and give a good account of themselves. What we got instead was, in my opinion, the dullest, most dour performances from England at a major tournament that I can ever remember. John Terry was by no means the sole culprit—am I the only one who can tell that Steven Gerrard just doesn’t like playing for England?

But, yeah… Whatever. Rant over. John Terry is a dubious real-life character, but a fine PES player whenever I’ve had the opportunity to play with him. Maldini is in his early 30s now and before too long I’ll need another commanding CB to fill his boots.

And so to Frank Lampard. Yet another much-vaunted player who comprehensively failed to perform in Germany in 2006. And it could be argued that he was always only a flash in the pan a few seasons ago. Was it in 2004 that Lampard was being touted as the best midfielder in the world? It seems like a very long time ago now, whenever it was.

But, like Terry, Frank Lampard is a great PES player. He plays in several positions in midfield, is a great tackler, has got great energy, and of course that most important skill for a PES midfielder—Middle Shooting. I look forward to scoring several long-range sizzlers every season with Lampard.

I couldn’t bring in 3 new players without getting rid of some. I offloaded three existing members of my squad in the various deals that brought in the new boys. The players who went were Fernandez, Scholes and Khumalo.

Fernandez was a great player for my team during those often-tricky ‘middle years’ between the Default squad and my current near-dominance of the league. But alas, he’s now ageing and ripe for the chop. I had high hopes for Scholes but he’s just taking too long to develop—I might buy him back in a few seasons’ time when he’s at his peak. As for Khumalo, he was good but not great for me, and he formed part of the deal that prised Ronaldo away from his CPU club. I doubt I’d have got him otherwise.

Things are changing here on PES Chronicles—hopefully for the better. For the past several months I have chronicled faithfully my day-to-day experiences of playing Pro Evolution Soccer. I could very easily continue in that vein indefinitely, but I feel that things need freshening up. An altered posting schedule will allow me more time to compose (hopefully) better articles.

I’ll still be relating what I’m up to on PES2008 (and on FIFA08). But I’ll be doing it in a different way. After so many seasons of detailed recaps of my progress, complete with diagrams, screenshots, etc., I don’t think there’s any real need or point in doing it all over again. I’ve covered a lot of ground over the past several months. I don’t want to cover it all again and simply end up repeating myself ad infinitum. So I’ll be summarising a lot more than I used to. I’ll just be covering the big highlights.

The new style of posting will also allow me more scope to talk about PES2009 and FIFA09. Over the next two months there’s going to be an increasing amount of rumour, speculation, and hard news emerging from both camps. I’ll be ‘covering’ it all in detail (huh, listen to me, talking as if I’m a proper pseudo-journalistic blogger all of a sudden).

I’m one of the many football game fans who expects both games to be great this year. I have no means of knowing for certain, of course, but I suspect that come September/October, we’re going to be the happiest we’ve ever been with the choice of football games on offer. FIFA09 is going to be a superb evolution of the all-new FIFA franchise—I’d put a very large amount of money on that. And PES2009 should be a triumphant return to form for the tarnished series. Although I do agree with the conventional wisdom which says that it’ll be another year or two before we see what Seabass & co. are really capable of on the new generation of consoles.

On Friday I’ll be looking at all of the rumours and confirmed news about PES2009. I’ll try to sift through it all and reach some kind of conclusion. On Sunday I will do the same for FIFA09. Naturally, in neither case will I forget to mention how I’m doing in the current games of football that currently inhabit my console…

—————–

After completing two Trebles in consecutive seasons—2019 and 2020—it would seem there’s little else to play for in this Master League career. It would seem natural to abandon it and start again with a new team in a new league with a new career path using different players. I have played Master League that way in the past. Around about PES4, I got into the habit of not abandoning ‘completed’ Master League careers. I started playing them indefinitely, all year round—in one case, PES5, literally until the night before PES6 was released.

I’m going to do the same right now. My Coventry City team marches on. There’s lots to do yet. I want to get hold of some of these mouth-wateringly talented Regens that have started cropping up. I’m talking Ronaldo (the Brazilian one), Ronaldinho, Lampard, and many others.

But not Gerrard. Unbelievably, Steven Gerrard has signed up to play another year for Barcelona. His age? 41.

Surely this is wrong. It has to be a bug, or an oversight, or something. I can only hope that whatever it is, it doesn’t stop Gerrard finally retiring at the end of the coming season. I need to get him as early as possible so I can develop him and play with him at his peak before FIFA09 and PES2009 are released. It’s a lesser PES year without having Gerrard in my ML team. Middle Shooting is his, uh, middle name. Would he be better than Bradley? That’s what I want to know…

My actual transfer action was pretty poor. I tried for, and failed, to get Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, and Lampard. I made pretty hefty bids worth a lot of the in-game money. All declined my offer—although, as ever in PES, you never know if the problem lies with the club or the player.

After a couple of weeks of pre-season I still hadn’t bought anybody. My one and only pre-season friendly was against a South American selection—an All-Stars team, in effect. They’re probably the toughest opponents to face in a pre-season friendly, and so it proved again. They thumped me 3-1. A 23-year-old midfielder called Veron had a superb game for them…

I snapped him up in the next week. I’ve always liked Veron in PES. He was one of my star men in my unforgettable PES5 career. I have a feeling he’ll be great for me in this one too. If nothing else, he could be a perfect replacement for Camacho in the right-sided AMF role. Camacho is 32 now and only a couple of years away from having to be retired to the bench. I did get Scholes to act as his replacement but Scholes’ development is coming along very slowly.

Veron turned out to be my only pre-season signing. I did keep trying for Ronaldo & co., but they all steadfastly refused. I think I may have a solution. I don’t like it, but if I really want to get these players I’m going to have to start offering silly money for them. Silly money for me is anything above 20,000 for the transfer, and anything above 2500 for the salary. But I’ve got the cash—I could easily afford it. So why not? I think I will go for it in the mid-season window. Money is no object.

Yes, that’s a drearily predictable post title from your ever-punning PES blogger… (Although it’s not strictly a pun, but never mind.) I decided to go with it rather than the more traditional ‘pre-season 2020 negotiations’ title because a) I cannot resist wordplay, and b) actual negotiations were thin on the ground in this particular pre-season phase.

My existing squad has just won me a pretty emphatic Treble. There’s an old and venerable saying that goes something like: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

None of my players are over the age of 32. Even the few who are nearing that mark (Dos Santos, Komol, and a few others) are still amazingly gifted players who can do a job for me when necessary. In fact, they can do a bit more than just ‘a job’ for me—they’d be worthy of regular starting places if there weren’t other, younger players ahead of them. Thus I don’t need to ‘retire’ any players, and I don’t need any new players. So what exactly was I up to in this negotiations period? Why didn’t I simply press X seven times (or is it eight times?) and have done with it?

As I’ve mentioned before, I usually play one Master League career indefinitely for the entire PES year. That’s what I’m doing again this year. I’m not even vaguely tempted to restart and do it all over again with a new Master League team, not even as an experiment (so don’t think about suggesting it, because it’s not ever gonna happen).

2020 will be my 14th season. In years gone by it’s around about now in a Master league career that I start thinking about what will happen to my team in three or four seasons’ time. In 2024 a lot of my current crop of players will be at or near retirement age. My current youthful stars will be starting to decline. I’ve always found it best to start planning for that stage right now.

So I popped along to the Youth list. (I could never, under any circumstances, call it the ‘Rookie’ list, just as I will never call a football team’s strip a ‘uniform’.)

Once again I found the list pretty bare. I suppose it’s still a mite too early for some of the game’s megastars to have played their full careers, retired, and come back as Regens. (Rooney and Torres, both late-thirtysomethings, are still out there playing.)

I only signed two players—Scholes and Saviola. They’re both 18 years old, so I must have missed seeing them last year. Lucky for me that no one else picked them up.

I’m a big fan of Paul Scholes in real life. Like every other great English player of his generation, he failed dismally to establish himself on the international stage, but at club level he was magnificent in his prime. And he’s still not too bad now. I was delighted to get him as a raw 18-year-old. When his time comes, he’ll be a solid replacement for Camacho out there on the right side of midfield. (Camacho will be 30 next season!)

As for Saviola, I have fond memories of this player from PES6. In every Master League career there comes a time when you get your first real, proper striker, and you start to play the ball around him and score goals regularly with him after a long, dour struggle with the Defaults, and it’s just magical. In PES6, that striker was Saviola. His stats look pretty good right now even for an 18-year-old. (And for some reason, he’s been given a starting Agility stat of 97 - ! At the age of 18. How very peculiar.)

I didn’t get anyone else. The two new boys will sit on the bench. I’ll play them whenever I think I can get away with playing them. It’s actually a few seasons too early for wholesale rebuilding efforts. The crunch for me and this squad will come when several of my players start hitting their mid-thirties and I have to start releasing them. I’ll only keep a few of them to let them have that emotional farewell game before their retirement. I’m not sentimental.