My first game of the new Master League season was against Galatasaray, one of last season’s high-fliers.

I was playing at home, but - as happens around 7 times out of 10 when I play at home - the damn game forced me to play in my Away kit. Putting my team in its Away kit is actually the wrong decision by the game 90% of the time - at home and away grounds. My Coventry City team plays in an entirely sky blue kit - naturally - and there’d actually be no clash with any of the other teams’ kits. It’s just stupid.

I cannot believe that kit selection’s omission from all but Exhibition mode in PES2008 was anything other than a careless oversight. There are rumours that the forthcoming patch from Konami will be an attempt to fix lots of things about the game, not just the framerate. Here’s hoping for the rumours to have some truth to them - and, if so, for pre-game kit selection to make a welcome comeback in all modes

(The patch! Already there is more hope being placed in the forthcoming patch than there is in the Second Coming of Christ.)

Getting down off my soapbox and back to the game, things went a bit wrong even before kick-off when two of my six new faces turned up for match day with the dreaded blue arrows next to their names. Suzuki and Rommedahl were the culprits. No matter. I put Jaric in at DMF. Rommedahl wasn’t in the First XI anyway. I’d miss having him as a supersub, though.

I hope the match wasn’t a taste of things to come this season. I conceded a goal within the first 30 seconds. I tried to pass the ball out wide to Mao Molina, but it didn’t reach him. A Galatasaray player intercepted, zig-zagged his way right through my defence as if they were not even there, and scored.

I had a small amount of pressure but couldn’t keep the ball for long before the CPU team was attacking again. They scored just before halftime with a header from a corner. I am finding it very tough to defend ‘blind’ corners in PES2008. These are the corners that are taken from the far side of the pitch where you can’t see your six-yard box.

Goal number three for the Turks arrived midway through the second half. I was actually mounting some consistent pressure and carving out opportunities. I hit the post with a speculative long-range shot from De Ridder. I was enjoying the new freedom that the new players were bringing me. I could rely on being able to stop and turn with them without the CPU team automatically nipping in to take the ball away. Being only 0-2 down, I was really going for it.

Then the worst happened. And I meant the absolute worst - one of those quintessential PES moments that makes you groan.

Mao Molina received the ball on the left wing from Klavan. But something strange happened. Mao Molina didn’t collect the ball properly. It seemed to bounce back off his legs a few yards into space. Either I had tried to turn and run with the ball too quickly, or the game was modelling the fact that this was the first time both players had played together, or it was just some random effect.

So there was the ball rolling in open space midway between Klavan and Mao Molina. Klavan was best-placed to collect it, but I was still controlling Mao Molina. I pressed L1 to switch to Klavan, but I pressed a split-second after the cursor had already auto-switched to him… Meaning that I actually re-selected Mao Molina, and in the time all this faffing about was going on a Galatasary attacker scooped up the ball and raced clear toward my goal.

I brought out Zamenhof, but the CPU player took it around the keeper and slotted it home. 0-3. So much for the brave new world.

After twenty minutes spent editing all the English league team names, I turned my attention to PES United. Every year this is the team I take over and play my Master League career with. I always change their name to that of my home-town club - Coventry City - and edit the kit to the traditional (and world-famous) Sky Blue colour.

I was concerned that PES2008’s trimmed-down Edit mode wouldn’t let me do what I needed to do. But it was fine. Yes, it’s a poor Edit mode this year. I feel a lot of sympathy for fans who love nothing more than to spend hours tinkering with players and kits and boots and logos and whatnot. But the bare-bones Edit mode happens to be adequate for my modest needs.

The only thing I usually do that I couldn’t do this time was add a shirt logo. At the moment I cannot be bothered messing around with EyeCams or whatever it is I need to use to transfer images into the game. I would have liked simply to add some text and use that as a logo, but even that function is denied. Curse you Seabass!

I zipped through the Master League setup screens, impatient to finally get going. I chose Top Player difficulty with 10 minute matches, and I selected the Teamgeist ball to play with. When it came to choosing the transfer market levels, I went with Normal for everything.

And so to the formation screen.

I was interested to see some additions to the Default squad players. As well as the usual and expected Ivarov, Ruskin, Minanda, and Castolo et al, there’s a handful of new faces. Baumann, El Moubarki, Van den Berg, Ettori. They’re all around the 20-years-old mark. I think they’ve been added not just to bulk out a seriously stamina-challenged squad, but to provide you with some youngsters to develop over a few seasons. Ordinarily you can’t get rid of the Default players fast enough (I’m looking at you, Ximelez). If you still have any of them in your squad after a few seasons, you’re not doing things right. But this crop of new players looks promising - especially Van den Berg. I’ll be keeping a fond eye on all of them.

As ever, the main formation has got to be a 4-3-3. And, again as ever, setting up an initial First XI is a matter of choosing the best of a pretty bad bunch. Here’s the formation and selection I started with:

I know. With these players, it’s a formation that cries out: Attack me! But I have found that I cannot play with any other style of formation. Playing with two up front just feels wrong. With a 4-4-2 or a 3-5-2 I can never seem to make things happen. It’s 4-3-3 or bust for me. (I do kind of cheat on this a little by having two alternate formations assigned to strategy buttons, and I use them on the fly in the midst of games. But they’re very special alternate formations, and I use them in a peculiar way.)

I put all the defenders’ and the DMF’s defensive arrows on full. I set up a couple of attacking runs for the AMFs and CFs. (They haven’t worked out too well and I’m chopping and changing them from game to game.)

Then I was ready to play. I had chosen to play in Division 2 of League B, after a few minutes’ confusion over just which League had all the English clubs in its Division 1. After messing around for a while I finally just swapped out the entire Division 1 of League B for all the English clubs. This way, when I get promoted, I’ll be taking part in a virtual English Premiership. That’s the way I like it. However, I did not change any of the clubs in Division 2. Consequently I find myself playing in a real mish-mash of a league. Celtic and Rangers are there. Galatasaray are there. Rosenborg are there. River Plate are there. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. Never mind.

I forget now who I played in the first game. Whoever it was, they were all over me. I was cursing the Default players’ treacle-slow movements and response times. I viciously cursed their oil-tanker-like turning circles. I went 0-1 down. Then, somehow, I scored my first goal. Nothing special, really. But the first cut is the sweetest, or something.

The game ended in a 1-1 draw. Overall I was much happier with the Default players than I have been at the start of Master League in the last few PESes. This year they seem more resilient and more capable on the ball, relatively speaking.

I got a shock when it was time to choose my team for the next game. Barely any of the First XI had more than half their stamina left. It’s going to be a long, hard season.

I’m done with my International Cups for now. I got to the final of one last night and lost to a deflected goal in extra time. Perhaps 90% of gamers would just reload their last autosave and play the match again, and again, until they won it. My house rules don’t permit me to do that. I have to go all the way back to the start of a whole new tournament.

Below are the two random goals promised by the post title. I recorded them over the past few days, using my mobile phone. The poor video quality is regrettable but unavoidable. (And you have to take into account the really shockingly poor quality of the PS3 game’s replays to begin with.)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kvkOqcp_Pg&rel=1]

Both goals were scored at various times during my ten-or-so stabs at the International Cup since Thursday 25th October.

I won’t be playing any more International Cups for a while. I’ve reached the point now where I think I’m familiar enough with PES2008 to get down to the real business. Master League. It’s finally time. At the time of writing I have already started. I am, of course, playing as Coventry City (i.e. an edited PES United). The real Greg Downs would be so proud.

From tomorrow I will post almost every day - circumstances permitting - about my ML team selections, matches, league positions, transfers, everything. The whole kit and caboodle. PES is deep, deeper than man can comprehend…

I usually play the same career for the entire PES year. For example, during the PES5 year I was unemployed in real life for 6 months, and I managed to get to the game-year 2048 in that time. After finding a job just in time for PES6, I ‘only’ got to 2026. What season will I get to this year? We shall see.

Occasionally I will also post assorted pictures, goals, and miscellaneous video clips from my Master League. Unfortunately I am stuck with a mobile phone camera at the moment. I recorded, converted, and uploaded the goals above as a test. Hopefully a straightforward method will become available to transfer replay save files from the PS3 to the PC, and then create high-quality movie files with them (without having to buy the PC version of the game - my PC simply wouldn’t be able to cope with it).

Let the year-long game begin.