PES Chronicles

Well, well, well. It was rumoured to be coming for a few weeks. And it was heavily tipped by some sources to be big news. But when yesterday’s news finally broke about PES2011, I didn’t know how to react. Like probably every PES fan in the world, I was disbelieving, flabbergasted, and overjoyed, all at once.

On the face of it, it’s all great news, exactly the kind of thing we’ve been waiting for. (Since 2007.) At the time of writing (Tuesday evening) the PES-painted corner of the Internet, bless its diabolical heart, is still digesting the news. The general reaction on the major PES sites has been interesting. Optimism, delight, cautious scepticism, pessimism, cynicism, delirium, impatience—yes, and when I’d stopped feeling all these things, I took a look at the forums. Ba-bum-bum-BISH…

Like I said, tonight I’m still absorbing it all, still trying to overcome my post-PES2008 cynicism. Dare I believe once again? Online Master League? Totally redesigned gameplay? All that good stuff? Oh mamma…

As I’ve remarked before, in my opinion a true next-gen PES will have to be as different from its predecessors as FIFA08 (next-gen) was from FIFA07 (last-gen). That was a massive leap for FIFA. Reading between the lines of the Konami press release—or actually reading the lines themselves—I think that they think, at least, they’re going to pull it off this time. And I want them to. I bet everybody reading this, even the most hardened cynic, wants them to too.

It’s going to be a long, hot summer.

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Meanwhile, back at my Master League career… The Treble is gone. Gone, gone, gone. I went out of the D1 Cup in frustrating circumstances, but not for the usual reasons.

Last time, I said that only carelessness would prevent me from winning a second successive Treble. Well, I was careless. My play-sessions have been patchy all week. I’ve played every day, but for variable periods. When Everton appeared as my opponents in the Cup, I played the match as I would play any first leg encounter. I went 1-0 down, then battered their goal for long periods without making any headway. I was ultra-careful not to concede another one. As the match headed for the end with the score still 1-0 to Everton, I basically shut up shop, deciding to take the 1-0 deficit back to my place.

Imagine my dismay when I got back to the main menu and discovered that the match I’d just played WAS the second leg. I’d already played the first leg, a few days ago, and forgotten about it. And it was a 0-0 match (I still can’t remember playing it even now). So I’d played virtually the whole match on the verge of D1 Cup elimination and I never knew it, never reacted as I should have.

I could have reloaded and replayed the match. My no-reloading rule doesn’t apply in situations like this where I’ve made a genuine mistake. But I’d gone all the way back to the main menu before realising what had happened. I always play with auto-save on. And thus there was no old save to go back to.I do keep rolling back-ups of old save files, but my most recent alternate save would take me back to before the mid-season interval, wiping out everything I’ve done since. I wasn’t prepared to do that

The Treble was gone. I had to take it like a man, and after a few keen moments of disappointment, I did.

I’m still 18 points clear at the top of the table. It’s tempting to start simming most or all of my league matches to get to the end of the season more quickly. I’m 90% certain that I’ll hop over to FIFA10 for a while come the end of this season, and I’m looking forward to it. But I don’t like simming more than occasional matches in group stages in Europe. Maybe one match, right at the end of a season. But mostly I’ll soldier on, playing them all.

I got to the Champions League Final. It’s 2027 in my game but the Final is still preceded by a promotional animation showcasing the 2010 Final in Madrid. Oh for the love of… That is so, what’s the word, shit. Yes.

My opponents were Inter. I’m sorry to report that I’ve reached a level of play in PES2010 where most games now feel very easy. I won this one 3-0. The best goal was a well-placed diving header from Morientes. The keeper didn’t move as the ball found the top corner. It was probably my favourite diving header of PES2010 so far. Yes, it’s a very diving-header-friendly game this year, but I always get a buzz out of them when they go in:

Link:

I grabbed a blurry shot of Buffon celebrating with the rest of my players, and moved on to the next league match. I was 19 points clear at the top of the table. A point from any of my remaining 6 matches would clinch the title. I’ll save that cliff-hanger for next time.

Zaki is gone. Oh, he’s still with my club in body, but in spirit he is no longer one of my players. His decline is now terminal, and he’s permanently purple-arrowed. He won’t play for me again. It’s a great shame. At Zaki’s peak he was my automatic first-choice striker, and one of the top 5 strikers I’ve ever played with in 10 years of ISS/PES.

Off the top of my head, that top 5 would look something like this:

1) Bergkamp (PES5)
2) Stoichkov (PES3)
3) Vieri (PES5)
4) Zaki (PES2010)
5) Giggs (PES2008(PS2/PSP))

I know I’m forgetting other strikers there. There have been so many. Owenn (sic) in one of the ISS Pro Evolution games was superb too, for just one example.

Zaki’s decline has brought him down to a rating of 72 OVR. That’s below mediocre. He’s refusing to sign a new contract. And he has the broken-hearted icon next to his name. We’re finished, me and Zaki.

It was tempting to release him mid-season, but I decided to keep him on in the hope of getting his Regen when the time comes. Unless that’s just one of the many old wives’ tales swirling around about the all-new Master League. We’ll see.

In the race for the league title, I’ve opened up a decisive lead at the top after 26 matches:

This lead—an unassailable 17 points with a third of the season remaining—is unprecedented in my career, and it’s a slight concern. Has PES2010 suddenly become easy for me, or is this season just an inevitable kind of one-off? I hope it’s the latter.

I’m through to the Quarter Final in the Champions League and the Semis in the D1 Cup. It’s been very easy—along the way I thumped Manchester United 5-0, away. If I don’t get this second successive Treble it’ll be because of carelessness.

Shock! Horror! My golden boy, Capuano, has started to decline… Well, he’s lost a point off his OVR rating. He was 98 OVR. He’s now 97 OVR. He’s obviously past it.

Castolo is still ticking over nicely—nothing spectacular to report. Palmieri is looking tired and probably needs putting out to pasture. I’ll take care of it at season’s end.

In the likely event that this is my last full season on PES2010 for a while, it’s certainly a memorable one. Against Manchester United in the league I was 0-1 down and equalised. Then I went 1-2 down, but equalised again. Then I scored three goals in the second half and won 5-2. Eh? That kind of thing just never happened before.

It was a similar story against Liverpool, one of the giants of the division. I thrashed them 3-0 without even having to try very hard.

It all adds up to something. I’ve already decided that after this season I will finally, in the scathing words of PES fandom, ’go play FIFA’, but I would like to return to PES2010 at some point. If I finish this season at a canter, as seems likely, would I be motivated to come back after a spell with FIFA10? Or would I come back only to play BaL? There’s no way of knowing until I get there. And there’s still a Treble to win in the meantime.

After finally clinching the elusive Treble at the end of season 17, I have immediately cracked on with season 18. Why am I going on with PES2010, and not jumping over to FIFA10—even if only for a short while—as I’ve often looked forward to doing (and still look forward to doing, eventually)? Briefly: I’m still enjoying Master League, I’ve still got stuff to do in it, and I don’t want to break the spell.

My Treble-winning season took a lot out of me, mentally and financially. After assembling a great squad over so many seasons, there was a cost—my combined wages bill for all players was £99,500,000. Ninety-nine million, five hundred thousand pounds. I first saw that demented figure at around the 30-game mark, near the end of the season. Expected Earnings predicted a £30,000,000 shortfall. I thought I’d have to sell a player or two to make the cut on Budget Day. I had Morientes earmarked for sale. Surely I’d get a good £20m for him at least?

But there was no need to sell anybody. I got a ridiculous amount of cash for winning the Treble. A load of sponsors paid out on bonus clauses. The fan club brought in a cool £20m on its own. No AI teams made bids for any of my players, which was unusual, but fortunately I didn’t need them to.

I brought in a few promising Youths, paid all the bills, and emerged £300,000 in credit on the other side of Budget Day. It was a lot closer than I’d like, and really I’m just deferring the tough choices until the end of the new season. The only way for me to sustain this squad on these wages would be to win a Treble every season.

Last season’s big star was arguably my loan signing, Gilardino. His mid-season arrival was very timely. His goals were a decisive factor in winning the Treble. I tried twice to sign him in the transfer window, and twice I was rejected. What more do I need? I’m the number 1 club, the domestic and European champions, the inter-continental champions, and he still won’t come. But perhaps there’s more to it than that. Maybe the game automatically rejects transfer bids when you manifestly cannot afford the transfer fee. And I definitely could never afford the likely transfer fee of £30m+. But I’ll get Gilardino eventually.

I’ve changed both my kits for the new season. When my 60GB PS3 died last week (I’m still hurting), the only data I lost was my Edit file that contained the new kits I’d created just before the end. This new new home kit looks a lot like that lost kit, but I’ve put aside superstition and just gone with it. My new away kit is a little bland, but I was hankering for an alternative to the Galatasaray-style away kits I’ve had for a few seasons now.

My main ambition for the new season is to win another Treble. My secondary aim is to continue to develop my young players, particularly Castolo and Capuano. I’m still mulling over whether to move my star left-back, Capuano, up to AMF for good. He can play at AMF—I spent the money on positional training a while ago now—but has a lower rating there at present. At left-back, he’s now an astonishing 97 OVR. Would it be a waste of that talent to make him play in a new position? I’m torn in both directions.

Early games have been very good. I have won 9 and drawn 1 in the league, scoring lots of goals in the process.

Zaki, despite being past it, is still in my team. And he’s scored a few goals as well, even netting a traditional PES cracker from 35 yards into the postage stamp corner of the net. I’ll save up all the special goals for a mini-compilation later in the season.

In the D1 Cup my 1st round opponents were Manchester United. I lost the first leg at my ground 0-1, but turned it around at Old Trafford, beating them 1-3 there. In Europe my opening group matches have yielded 4 points (a draw, a loss, a win) and I’m joint-top of the group table.

So far, this season is shaping up exactly like last season. If it ends the same way too, I’ll be happy.

After 17 seasons of my Master League career as Coventry City in PES2010, I have finally won the Treble. League, Cup, European Cup. (With the mid-season Konami Cup, it’s a Quadruple.) I did it yesterday morning. I played all of the crucial matches from the D1 Cup Final through to the decisive last league match of the season in one glorious session of play.

The first leg of the Treble was the D1 Cup Final—or the England Cup Final, as I still refuse to call it. My opponents were Rangers. As I remarked last time, I don’t think Rangers have done anything in this ML ‘world’ except get to this final. I’m used to facing one of the top teams in the final. It was slightly suspicious, and I went into the match with a strong sense of foreboding. As we all know, in PES the so-called lesser opposition can be the toughest opponents of all.

And it was a tough match, but I came through it to win. 1-0 it finished, with my goal coming just after half-time. It was a fine diving header from Kuktayan, after my created player ‘not-Greg’ had hit the post with a first-time shot from distance. (The goal features in the video clip further down below.)

Nice to see Pires getting Best Player and Top Scorer awards for the tournament. And nice also to see Capuano joining him in the Best Eleven.

That was one down, two to go. The Champions League Final was against Manchester United, my closest challengers in the domestic league. In recent seasons they’ve probably been the toughest team to play against. They’re packed with stars, not least my former regular transfer target, Scholes, currently a 98 OVR-rated 27-year-old midfielder, and as formidable as you’d expect.

The game kicked off, and before I’d even touched the ball I was 1-0 down, instantly. This has been a problem for me from the start of my career. Time and again the AI can seemingly walk the ball into my net straight from its kick-offs. Whenever it happens I always feel that I was powerless to prevent it. I am furious with the game and with myself. I always view the early AI goal as the AI simply giving itself a goal head-start.

I exerted myself to get back in the game. Soon I’d carved out three glorious chances that would have been goals under any other circumstances, but the Man Utd keeper got to them all. I had Cejumi sent off in the second half with the score still 1-0 to Man Utd.

Here is where I began to consider the strong possibility that I would lose the match, and with it the Treble. After all my hard work, it’d be a rollover  again to next season… Would I be strong enough to resist reloading this match and playing it again? That early auto-goal from the AI would give me a pretext, a casus belli, if I wanted it. And I wouldn’t have to mention it on the blog…

But, no—I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it. I’d know I’d ‘cheated’ under my own strict rules against reloading. That would be enough to poison any Treble. I had to win here and now, or not at all.

As so often happens with 10 men, I still played well and was a threat to the Man Utd goal. With about 15 minutes left Gilardino, somehow, got me an equaliser. It wasn’t an extraordinary goal—just a scraped shot that went in off the underside of the bar. A typical poacher’s goal, and one of the many reasons I admire Gilardino so much. He’s on loan to me until the end of the season, when I’ll be trying very hard to sign him up.

I could have won the game with good chances in the rest of normal time, and then in extra time, but the match had had ‘penalty shootout’ written all over it since my equaliser. When it came to the penalties I changed my usual policy of putting them all down the middle, with mixed results. I dragged one too far wide and hit the post. It went to sudden-death, but I held it together and won.

Not a single player in the Best Eleven? That’s slightly worrying, but not unheard-of. The best team isn’t necessarily made up of the best players. At least my stalwart, Nakamura, who has been with me since the beginning, got the most Assists.

With both Cups in the bag, all I needed was the title to wrap things up and clinch the Treble. With three matches to go I was still 3 points clear, as I had been for several weeks now.

My last-but-one match of the season against Manchester City was a very, very peculiar game. I lost it 1-3, at home, a crazy result like no other I’ve had all season. I won’t go into the details, but it was very fishy indeed. Naturally Man Utd won their match and drew level with me on points. My goal difference kept me in first place, and so the final match of the season would decide everything. Funny that.

My opponents were Boca Juniors, tricky opponents, and they provided a stern test here. I had to win, but with about 60 minutes of the match gone it was still 0-0. Often in this career, I’ve found that if I haven’t scored by the hour-mark, I’m not meant to score, in some strange way. With my anxiety levels rising, the ball fell nicely for Munitis, my reigning European Player of the Year. For some reason he was in the middle of the pitch, having wandered in from his customary wide-left position. No matter.

I teed it up, took the shot, and a delicious 25-yard, low, placed shot found the corner of the AI net. 1-0 it ended. My players’ arms went up—and so did mine.

Here’s a clip showing the key Treble-clinching goal (after the winning D1 Cup Final goal, from Kuktayan):

Link:

The final league table:

I put the controller down and sat taking it all in for a moment. 275 hours, or whatever it is by now. Many months of struggle just to get promoted. And many months again to get to this stage. I felt a sense of accomplishment, and it was better than any other Treble before. I would include all my Trebles throughout all the Golden Years of PES in that statement. This Treble, here and now in PES2010, in the (rightly) much-maligned next-gen era, is the best one of them all. What can I say? I’m strange.

Before the season ended, I was awarded a PSN Trophy for becoming the number 1 club in the ML world. Now I might be able to attract the best players.

With the Treble won, I felt at something of a loss. What to do now? At this point of the football game year—nearly May, nearly three-quarters of the way through it—a prolonged spell of FIFA10 and a return to Manager Mode is long overdue. And maybe I owe it to FIFA10, in some weird way, to go back to it now.

But the greater part of me just wants to start playing the next season in my Master League career in PES2010. Immediately. There is so much still to be experienced!

First and most importantly: could I win the Treble again? And there’s the fates of all my players to consider. How great could Capuano become? What if I moved him to AMF permanently? And will Castolo ever make it as a top striker? I cannot walk away now from these and so many other aspects of the career I have built, brick-by-sometimes-painful-brick, over so many man-hours. There are more reasons to play on, now, than there are reasons to take even a short break for FIFA10.

Season 18 has already begun. At the time of writing (Tuesday night) I’m 5 matches in and loving it just as much as before. PES2010 and I still have a lot of unfinished business.