PES Chronicles

I had a bad start to season 11, but there’s nothing like going on a great run to make up for things. I enjoyed 6 straight wins in the league. It was an impressive sequence that was only ended by a 3-1 home defeat at the hands of Manchester United—a right mauling it was too. Regardless, the run has lifted me up to 7th place in the table.

In the D1 Cup (I’m still not calling it the ‘England Cup’), I was on the brink of elimination after a home defeat by Boca Juniors in the first leg of the second round. They beat me 1-2, and those two away goals meant I’d have to score at least twice at their place to have any chance of progressing. I felt confident, but as ever in this Master League the game had other ideas.

In the second leg, they were 2-0 up after 40 minutes. Disaster. Now 4-1 down on aggregate, I needed to score 3 goals without reply. A few seasons ago I’d certainly have wilted and gone out of the Cup, but I’m made of sterner stuff these days. I really fancied myself to do it. Master League adventures revolve around matches like this one. Before half-time I’d pulled one back, and went on to win the match 3-2 in what was just a good old-fashioned PES opera.

That ‘box score’ doesn’t even begin to tell the story of the match. In years to come, whenever I think of PES2010 (and whatever happens from now on, in the future I will think of PES2010 with fondness—I’ll remember this match among many other highlights. All three of my goals were put away by my top striker, Zaki, who has now pushed Sazi out of the first team. (How times have changed.) Zaki’s hat-trick goal, the killer third away goal, was simple enough. But, oh, what weight it carried…

Link:

In my Champions League group I’m still in contention, but I still haven’t won at home. It’s frustrating because I really want to see how much cold hard cash I’ll get for it. It’s sheer greed.

Aberdeen beat me at home with a stupid goal in the last minute. After mopping up a rare attack by them, I was anxious to get on with it. I tapped X to make my keeper toss the ball a few yards to a nearby defender. Instead, my keeper hurled the ball some 30+ yards to another player near the half-way line. The ball bounced off my player’s chest straight into an Aberdeen striker’s path, leading to a soft goal. I fumed.

Game 4 was at their place, and I won it 4-1, with ease. It looks as if Juventus have the first place in the bag and it’s between me and Aberdeen for second. I’ve got two fixtures left: Man City at home, and Juventus away.

The Treble is still alive, by the skin of its figurative teeth. Things are dodgy on all three fronts. I could have done without that Man Utd defeat in the league, and the Cups are currently something of a lottery with my relatively weak squad. But at least I’ve got a solid base to build on, if I can get a good few players in during the mid-season transfer window.

I need that transfer window to come along as soon as it can. I’ve got some good transfers lined up in all areas of the team. I’ll get to them next time.

I’ve really neglected the Cup so far in this career. Spending seven consecutive seasons in Division 2 has focused my attention on the League campaign. But on the rare occasions when I haven’t crashed out of the Cup in round 1, I’ve usually done pretty well. Last season (or was it the season before?), I suffered a Cup disaster: I won the first leg of the quarter-final 3-0, but complacently simmed the return leg. I just wanted to get on with the League. Of course, the game simmed a 0-4 defeat and I was out of the Cup. Lesson learned, I told myself.

But I’ve only gone and done it again. In this season’s Cup, after battling my way past Wigan Athletic and Standard Liege, I came up against the might of Arsenal. The first leg was away.

To say I was worried about the match would be an understatement. I normally breeze through the squad selection screen. This time I spent ages picking my team and tweaking things to make ‘em just right. I put my fullbacks on all-out Defence mode. I pushed my DMF back a notch or two.

The game got underway. I’d heard so much about Arsenal’s prowess in PES2010. In my previous PES experience—PES6(360), at the tail-end of last summer—Arsenal were a forbiddingly tough team to play against.

I won 0-3—away from home, at Arsenal’s ground. And it was easy. Arsenal barely threatened me. I had 62% possession, and 7 shots on target to their 1 shot on target. What made it so easy? Extra concentration? Or was it that extra quality time I spent in the pre-match menu, making individual tweaks for this one occasion? Probably both.

Of course, I wasted the whole effort by simming the home leg. I disntinctly remember my thought-process. “Oh crap, I’ve got to play the meaningless second leg of the Cup. I’m 3-0 up! Even for me this is going to be a formality. Damn, what a waste of 15 minutes. I really want to just get on with the League. Hmmm… I think I’ll sim it. Okay, so the game overturned my 3-0 lead last season by awarding the CPU team a 4-0 return victory, but it wouldn’t happen twice in a row, would it? Nah. I’ll sim it…”

And the inevitable happened. The simmed result was 0-4 to Arsenal at my place. I crashed out of the Cup. Really, this time, I’ve learned my lesson. No more simming of Cup matches. Ever.

Mid-season came and went. I picked up three new signings. ESPIMAS needs no introduction. He’s a regenned Defaulter, and again like Minanda seems fairly decent already. 66 OVR at age 17 is very promising. We’ll see how he progresses. I left The Myth of Castolo to rot.

SAZI was an extraordinary find in the Youth Team. There he was, in amongst the assorted mediocrities and myths, with a fat 75 OVR next to his name. I had a look through his stats, and all were great. He’s 19.

I snapped up Sazi. Straightaway I noticed I was thinking of him as ‘SAH-zee’, but other pronunciations could equally apply. SAT-zee? SART-zee? SAY-zee? SAZZY (rhymes with ’snazzy’)? No, he’s SAH-zee in my head and will thus remain. PES traditionally proffers abundant material for debate in this area. As is shown again by my other signing, TULASNE. Too-LAZZ-knee? Tuh-LAZZ-nuh? Or is the ’s’ perhaps a silent one—Too-LANE? Whatever, Tulasne was a ‘proper’ signing, costing £100k from the Free Agent pool. I still have to be careful with money. I’m going to be in serious debt at the end of the season whatever happens now.

In the League matches themselves, it’s really been the same old story. Some ups, a few downs, and far too many draws. I’m just not scoring enough goals. PES2010 remains partly a mystery to me. I have never spent this long out in the cold on any Master League, ever.

Season 7’s top six, after 22 matches:

Am I going to do it? This season, at long last, am I going to get promotion? That is the burning question. With 12 matches left, of course I could do it. But I have a horrible feeling of deja vu about everything…

It’s all over. Season 2018 has come to an end. I’ve been going for the Treble of League, Cup, and European Cup. It’s been a long, hard slog on a number of levels, not least the sheer number of matches involved.

The Division 1 Cup final had my alarm bells ringing even before kick-off. My opponents would be one of my bogey teams—AEK Athens.

The match turned out to be just as expected. Against a Man Utd or an AC Milan,I doubt I’d have had any trouble coasting to an easy victory. But when it’s a bogey team…

I hit the post twice in the 90 minutes, had 20+ shots overall, and still it went to extra time. Early in the second period of extra time, I got the goal that I thought had to be the winner. It was a nice little Prieto thunderbolt scored from the ‘DMF hole’ 25 yards out. (In this entire ML career Prieto is probably my Most Valuable Player, all told.) Ah, but this is PES, and this was AIK Athens. Straight from their kick-off, they went upfield and lobbed a floaty pass over my defence. There was too much strength on it and I brought out Dudek to collect. Only, he collapsed on the ground in front of the ball, letting it roll past him. An Athens striker, following up, had an easy tap-in. Sensational! 1-1! I had to smile, really. What else can you do?

It looked like going to penalties. I hate penalty shootouts in PES—you really might just as well have a coin-toss to determine the winner. I kicked off with that rather forlorn feeling of hope that you sometimes get in PES… Gambino got the ball out on the right. I cut inside, jinked past a defender, jinked past another (unashamedly using the zig-zag dribble)—and from 18 yards fired an unstoppable shot high into the Athens net. It was almost literally the last kick of the match. I’d won 2-1. And that was the Cup.

By contrast the European Cup final was a tame affair. My opponents were Real Madrid and I beat them easily. 2-0 it ended, and it could have been 10-0.

My next league game was against Roma. It ended 0-0, frustratingly, but it was enough to clinch the title. And that was the Treble, finally, in the bag. Below is the final table, showing me with a healthy goals-scored column at last, and a healthier goal difference. I’m satisfied with the title win, but dissatisfied at losing 8 matches in the process. That shouldn’t really be a title-winning record, but there you go. It’s ‘only a game’. When I return to PES2009 (and I will return), one of the challenges I’ll set myself will be to win the league without losing any (or many) matches.

Here are the post-match locker-room celebrations, for anyone yet to see them. I did see them last season but a bug meant that I saw the CPU team celebrating instead of my own team. Here are my Coventry City heroes of 2018, jumping about like lunatics:

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And so that is that. I have to be honest and say that I have wearied of PES2009 over the course of this season. The main reason for this is that I have more or less worked out how to win matches, over and over again. The only times I get caught out now, really, are when I lose focus and get sloppy.

I am taking a break for a day and then returning on Thursday with—well, with what, exactly? Season 2019 in PES2009? (No, not yet—it’s still far too soon.) FIFA09? (I have played several more matches of my Atletico Madrid career in Manager Mode. It’s such a shame that Manager Mode feels so crude and empty. Such a great shame.)

But no, I think after all this time it’s time to broaden the scope of PES Chronicles. As of now, this is a general gaming blog—albeit with strong and frequent mentions of my PES/FIFA activities (because I will be back to them, eventually). I was a dedicated general gamer long before I was an obsessive ISS/PES gamer. I still love games in general and I want to play more of them again. So here goes.

For all my current good league form I’d welcome an old-fashioned cup run. Some would say that the essence of excitement in football is the knockout cup competition. Winners take all. 

After the mid-season negotiations period I’ve carried on in the league just as before: winning lots of games, drawing a few, losing none. I’m top of the table and I think I’m going to stay there (talk about tempting fate…). What I’d really, really love this season is to do a league and cup double.

Naturally, PES has other ideas. Over the years Master League has a habit of pulling the rug out from under you just when you think you’re getting comfortable. I met West Ham in the first leg of the cup Quarter Final. 0-0 it ended. So to the second leg—where West Ham had precisely 1 shot on goal in 120 minutes of football. I had 27 shots on goal, 12 of them on target, but couldn’t score either. I hit the post twice in the first period of extra time. I hit the bar in the 119th minute.

And so to penalties. It was my first penalty shootout in this ML career. I hope it’s my last. PES has always made me deeply unhappy when it comes to penalty shootouts. There is no rhyme or reason as to why some players’ kicks fly yards wide, while other players’ kicks scream perfectly into the corner of the net.

But after three of the five penalty kicks I was two penalties ahead. West Ham players hoofed two their kicks onto the stands. Great, I thought. A pretty easy shootout, this. But… oh no. My last two kickers also put their penalties into the stands. Why? Just because. That’s why.

It went to sudden death. I missed my 7th penalty. West ham scored theirs and I was out of the Cup. I’d almost have preferred to lose in regular time to West Ham’s one solitary shot.  

Back in the league, suddenly I couldn’t score again. I’ve noticed a toughening up of the CPU defences over the past few league matches. It’s as if some kind of hidden extra layer of difficulty has kicked in now that I’ve started winning matches and scoring freely.

An indifferent run of form—a couple of draws and a defeat—has dropped me to 4th in the table. I’m only a point behind the new leaders but it’s still a psychological blow not being up there after being #1 all season.

Those new leaders are Roma. I played them straight after my Cup exit. They annihilated me 4-0. Wayne Rooney is at Roma in my ML, and he was a nightmare to deal with, getting himself a hat-trick. I had no complaints about this one. I was sloppy and unfocused. I was frustrated after the cup defeat and had two players sent off late on. By that stage the damage had been done.