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

At the mid-season stage I’m still winning, and winning well. The difference between my performances this season and my performances in the last two seasons is that I’m defending with greater concentration and seriousness.

I rarely concede goals now, compared to times past. I stand off, I harry, I snuff out dangerous moves. I refrain from practising my old vice of diving in all over the place, conceding free kicks, getting yellow and red cards, and often simply enabling the CPU players to evade my clumsy tackles and race through on goal.

As a result of all this disciplined defending, my league record at the moment is great, almost as good as it possibly could be. Played 15, won 14, drawn 1, lost 0. For me, that’s pretty damn good. I’m unbeaten and I’ve only conceded 7 goals. True perfection would be to win every game and concede no goals, but that could never happen. I don’t think it could, anyway.

No doubt there are some out there who are good enough, potentially, to deny the CPU teams any goals throughout an entire league season. But I believe there are some goals that can never be prevented. Over the course of a season the game itself makes sure that at least a few goals are conceded and at least a few points are dropped.

————

Just before the mid-season negotiations I played the first leg of the Division 1 Cup quarter-final. There’s no such thing as a routine game for me while I’m still going for my major target of a Treble (League, Cup, European Cup).

My opponents were Heracles Almelo. At times they’re a tricky team to play against; at other times I’ve found them easy prey. How they would be in this game depended very much, I suspected, on whatever algorithms deep in the bowels of PES2008’s programming code are responsible for the character of the CPU teams from game to game.

Unfortunately for me, Heracles were in TRICKY mode. I was at home, so my primary strategy lay in not conceding any goals. Any goals I scored myself would be a bonus. As bad luck would have it I spent the whole game defending against a very spirited, very attack-minded opposition.

How my goal survived intact I’ll never know. The game finished 0-0. Come the away leg I’ll be the strong favourite, as I’ll only have to score once and the tie will effectively be over.

(Incidentally, it has struck me for several years now that the away goals rule in football is far, far too overpowered. It produces horrendously skewed games and results. Too many times a mediocre away team will fluke a goal and effectively win the tie with it. I think the footballing argument for the away goals rule is false. I have a conspiracy theory about the away goals rule. It was introduced by the authorities at a time when television was just starting to show big interest—and hence BIG $$$—in screening live football matches. Now, one thing that television cannot abide is any disruption to its schedules, and games that run into extra time are notorious for doing this (leading to The 10 O’clock News coming on at midnight, for example). The away goals rule effectively reduced by about 90% the amount of two-legged matches whose second legs went into extra time. I’ve just plucked that % figure out of the air, so I have no idea how accurate it is, but it certainly feels accurate.)

Here in the exact middle of the season I’m 13 points clear in the League. I’m nicely positioned in the two Cups. I believe that the Treble is a strong possibility (due to the ‘one bad game’ factor in the Cups, the Treble can never be a certainty). I’m unbeaten, and I’ve only conceded 7 goals. This is all looking good. No getting sloppy, now…

The end of season 2019 was one of my busiest and most eventful of recent years. Looking back to the start of this season, I had three aims: to win a traditional Treble of League, Cup, and European Cup; to go through the entire league season unbeaten; and to concede less than 20 goals while doing so.

The latter two aims fell apart fairly quickly. I lost a game and started shipping too many goals. That was okay—they were always bonus aims in any case, and I should have fun trying to achieve them in the future. Ah, but the Treble… The Treble was the Big One. I hadn’t won a Treble since season 2016, and that was my only one of this career. I badly wanted another one, and a better one—for many reasons I was dissatisfied with the 2016 Treble. Thankfully, I was more than on course for a more satisfactory Treble here in 2019.

I’ve already won the Division 1 Cup. I’m in the European Cup final. I’ve spent the whole season on top of the league. After I won league game 26, my players started running around like maniacs and celebrating, and I thought that was it, that I’d won the League. But no—the game took me straight back to the main ML menu without a trophy presentation scene. What was going on?

I discovered that with three games left I was 9 points ahead of Valencia, albeit with a ridiculously superior goal difference. Mathematically, they could still catch me if I lost all three remaining games and they won all of theirs by about 10-0 apiece. So why the signature Championship celebratory hugs among my team at the final whistle of the preceding game? Exactly the same thing happened last year. Obviously there’s a bug somewhere in the post-match ‘title-winning’ celebration scenes.

Before I had the chance to put the League to bed, there was the small matter of the European Cup final. For the sake of the Treble, this was the single most important game of the season. For the second European final running, my opponents were Lazio. They turned me over good and proper in the same match last season. I was wary of them, and I was right to be wary. Lazio were certainly not the attacking force they were last season, but the match was as dour and defensive as they come on PES2008 (generally an ultra-attacking game).

As time passed and the rare chances were being squandered by both sides, I feared the worst. Then in the 89th minute I broke clear with Kim Cyun Hi on the left. I’ve spent the whole season playing him very effectively out there on the left whenever Giggs can’t play for whatever reason, and it’s worked out very well. Kim is my top scorer in the league with 19 goals, which isn’t bad at all for a non-regular.

The goal was a relatively peculiar one for me in PES. The initial shot looks net-bound, but rebounds from the post, which usually means the CPU defence will scramble it away. However, Kim collects the rebound. Somehow I managed to retain enough composure not to instantly blast the ball over the bar, as would have happened if I’d jabbed at the Shoot button straightaway, as I usually would have done… Instead I ran Kim horizontally across the penalty area, ignored Schwarz’s timely run into space, and dinked the ball under the advancing keeper into the back of the net.

It was the Treble-winning goal. There was no time for Lazio to come back. They kicked off and had a token run down my left, but the final whistle went before they could do anything else. Yessss! That was the Treble in the bag, right there.

To make it official all I had to do was avoid being defeated 10-0 in each of my remaining league games. Okay, then. Game 27 was against my old friends Osasuna. Fittingly, I beat them 2-0 in an easy win. I say fittingly because for most of this Master League career they’ve been one of the poorest teams in the League and they’ve simultaneously been my bogey team. It’s always the way.

That was the Treble, officially, at last. Division 1 Cup, European Cup, and now the League—all had been won. It felt good. I allowed myself to relax and feel good about things, for a few moments.

I still had to play two last games in the League. I actually lost game 29, which was against Zaragoza—no doubt taking revenge against me for beating them in the D1 Cup final. But I won Game 30 against… I forget who it was against, actually, but I won it.

All of which left the final League table looking slightly less resounding in my favour than it perhaps should have been. I ended up winning the title by ‘only’ 4 points, when it feels as if I’ve had a superb, all-conquering season. I suppose the days of romping to league titles by margins of 10 or more points—which I used to do regularly in PESes of old—are gone for me.

The season had an amusing postscript. Well, I thought this was amusing: Osasuna were relegated from Division 1 at the end. That was a surprise. I tend not to follow what’s going on down in the basement. I had no idea they were in trouble. I won’t see my nemesis again for at least a season. The good news just keeps on coming…

And that, my friends, is that. I’ve finally won another Treble, in a manner that I deem to be more fitting than my only previous Treble. This is definitely my first proper Treble.

There’s still a lot to play for. I tend to always play one Master League career indefinitely, regardless of what happens. We’re still about two months from FIFA09, and about three months from PES2009. There’s still lots of PES2008 to be played before I can think about moving on to anything else. My current career goes on.

I still want to have the unbeaten League season that I’ve been trying for recently. And I want to concede less than 20 goals. And I want to win the league by more than 4 measly points. In the pre-season 2020 negotiations I really feel like getting some young players from the Youth list. I want to see what kind of team I can build when the inevitable time comes to start dismantling my current one. I’d better start planning for the future now. Anything is possible.