I’m getting toward the business end of season 2019 in my ongoing Master League career. I’ve got a great chance of winning only my second Treble (League, Cup, European Cup). I’m top of the league, I’m in the Division 1 Cup final, and I’m in the semi-final of the European Cup. All I have to do is play things cool and navigate my way through a relative handful of games. Easier said than done…

In league game 25 I quickly went 0-2 down to Deportivo la Coruna. They were strong challengers back in the first part of the season, but have since fallen away. They’re still hanging around in the upper reaches of the table, but haven’t got any chance of catching me. So there was no real reason for them to suddenly play like the most titanium-plated, skilful, speedy football players ever to grace a virtual pitch. But that’s what happened.

They scored a couple of pretty good goals that I couldn’t moan about too much. I exerted myself to get back into the game but just couldn’t score. I could barely even create a chance. By halfway through the second half nothing had happened for me, it was still 0-2 to them, and it looked like it was just going to be ‘one of those games’.

No, I wasn’t going to accept it. I felt like rebelling against the script. Starting in the 79th minute I staged a remarkable comeback. It all revolved around Del Piero, who is shaping up to be my player of the season by a long way. First he scored a snapshot goal from the edge of the box to make it 1-2. Then in the 85th minute, with a delicious aerial through-ball played with the outside of his right boot (just visible at the start of the replay), he set up Kim Cyun Hi for a sensational equaliser:

I was tempted to go for one of my half-volleys. If I’d been comfortably ahead, I would have done. Instead I made sure of the goal—Kim Cyun Hi is probably my most reliable striker in that kind of position. That, I thought, would be that. I’d have settled for the draw, all things considered. But then Del Piero bagged the winner in the 89th minute—a routine tap-in after a mini-scramble in the penalty area. I’m not sure, but I think this was the first time on PES2008 that I’ve come back from a 0-2 deficit to win a game in this manner. I used to do it all the time on the old ISS games. I recall going 0-3 down to Nigeria in an International Tournament (i.e. World Cup) and deciding that I just would not have it, and storming back to win 4-3 in normal time. That victory felt great, and so did this one.

In the semi-final of the European Cup I met PSV and beat them 4-0 in the first leg at their place. That made the second leg a mere formality, although I still had to be careful. I won the second leg 2-1. I’m safely through to the final, where I will face… Lazio again. Uh-oh. They gave me a torrid time in 2018’s final. I’ll be on guard this time.

The Division 1 Cup Final was against Real Zaragoza. This team have traditionally been one of my Master League’s most awkward customer’s. They’ve inflicted some painful defeats on me over the seasons, and I never seem to have an easy game against them. The final was a fairly typical, tight game with comparatively few chances by my standards. I’m used to making between 12 and 20 chances per game (on average). This one ended with only about 7 chances having been created. I took one of those chances (with Giggs), and won the Cup 1-0. After the game I was happy to see that my main man, Del Piero, had won one of the tournament awards.

And that was the first element of the Treble secured. I think the league title is pretty much a certainty at this stage. All I need is one more good game in the European Cup final, and the Treble is sure to be mine.

So much for predictions. Several times this season I’ve said (foolishly, it turns out) that I think this is the season when I win my first proper Treble. Yes, yes, yes: I did win a Treble two seasons ago, in 2016, but that came with lots of suspicious baggage. What I want is to win a Treble easily, without the feeling that the game has noticed me struggling in mid-table and decided to take pity on me and blatantly let me catch up.

Here in season 2018 it was all going so well. I’ve been top of the league almost from the start. I’m really tearing up trees in Europe—odd games notwithstanding. I think I’ve got those two competitions sewn up, as long as I’m careful.

The first round of the Division 1 Cup pitted me against RC Strasbourg. I haven’t played them in I don’t know how long. This might well be their first year in the top flight since I started this Master League. If so, then this would the first time I’ve played them since I was in the lower division myself.

Out of curiosity I checked the Division 1 league table before playing the cup match. As I suspected, Strasbourg were the current basement club, down there in 16th position. They were propping up the rest of the division. Their league record was pretty shocking, only a couple of wins all season. Yes, I felt afraid immediately. This is PES.

I was right to be afraid. That first leg was a home one for me. It finished 1-1, and I was actually fortunate to come away with the draw. I conceded an early goal—always a bad move, in any game—and spent the rest of the match struggling to create chances against a sturdy and skilful Strasbourg team. Yes, it really is the teams who should be non-entities who give you the toughest games. This being the Cup, you could half-close your eyes and ‘explain’ it by saying the minnows are strongly motivated to play against me, causing their players to play above themselves, as we see happen so often in real life.

Despite the slight setback in the first leg, I felt 100% confident about winning in the second leg at their place. So they’d got an away goal against me. Big deal. It’s happened before, and it will surely happen again. All I had to do was score at their place, and it’d be squared up.

And that’s what happened. I got the early goal in the second leg to make it 0-1 to me on the day and 1-2 to me on aggregate. When half-time came and that was still the state of play, I thought I’d done almost everything I needed to do. All that remained was to guard against complacency for the second half.

But Strasbourg had other plans. They slipped into a kind of God Mode… I say kind of, because despite them suddenly having the bulk of possession and shots on goal, I was still capable of stringing passes together and launching dangerous counter-attacks. When the AI is in full-on God Mode, you’re not allowed to have any attacking presence at all. Your players will just pass the ball to the opposition, or mysteriously allow the ball to bounce off their shins into touch, and there’s nothing you can do about it. So I suppose I should have felt grateful. Just play it cool, I told myself. Play it cool.

Then they scored, damn them. 1-1 on the day, 2-2 on aggregate. Both teams had an away goal. This match was heading for extra time, unless somebody scored.

That somebody should have been me. After their goal, the semi-God Mode effect was lifted, and I was allowed to exert consistent pressure once again. I almost had them a couple of times—one more away goal for me would kill them off completely—but just couldn’t apply the finish. Yes, I suppose I could complain about the many near-misses and miraculous AI keeper saves being just another example of AI scripting, but I’m less certain of scripting when it comes to my misses in front of goal, so I won’t complain. I’m just mentioning that it seemed odd, is all…

The inevitable happened. Strasbourg streaked away upfield and scored the winner in the dying minutes. Noooooo.

I had about a minute left to do something. All I needed was that one goal… I went off on a run—a rare, mazy dribble—with Camacho, and actually created a half-chance, but shot ludicrously high… The final whistle went there and then. My players fell to the ground and I just stared at the screen.

The Treble is gone. That’s it for season 2018. I haven’t even got to the mid-season period yet. It all leaves me with a peculiar empty feeling. If I could fast-forward to 2019, I probably would.

Never mind. I’m still unbeaten in the league—if I can finish the season with that record intact, it’d be my first unbeaten season since PES5, I now recall. If I can win the European Cup as well, that’d make it a great season by any standards. The Treble will still be there to go for next season.

Whoops. I did a very bad thing. It’s not the worst thing I could’ve done. I haven’t started reloading old saves to get different results or anything disgraceful like that. Nor am I about to declare my love for FIFA2001 or World Tour Soccer 2 or whatever. The very bad thing that I’ve done is actually quite small and innocent and harmless. And I hope I’m not alone in having done it. It’s this: I’ve accidentally played the Division 1 Cup final without realising it.

I don’t know for certain, but I suspect that most Master League players—perhaps all Master League players—have at some time played a cup match without realising that it was a cup match. I’ve done it lots of times, too many times to recount, and occasionally I’ve done it in the finals of Cups. I did it again today—I played the final of the Division 1 Cup without noticing it was the final of the Division 1 Cup until the end of 90 minutes. Doh…

It’s so easy to get into the routine of pressing X repeatedly and moving onto the next game without paying any attention to what the next game actually is. When I got to a pre-match screen and saw that Valencia were my next opponents I was instantly focused and excited. Aha! Here was the league six-pointer, I thought, that would decide the destiny of the league championship this season… So in a way I was fortunate that my D1 Cup final opponents were Valencia. It meant that I took the game very seriously anyway. If it’d been anyone else I might not have played with such vim and vigour…

I took the lead early in what I thought was just another big league game. Then, predictably, I had to watch as the AI took over almost every aspect of the gameplay. I really was just pressing buttons helplessly for a while as Valencia screamed back into things to make it 1-2 to them. Only then was full control returned to me and my players.

It astounds me that there is still an ‘argument’ running about whether or not scripting in PES even exists. I don’t care what anyone says. I know what I have seen and felt over the years, particularly over the past three years. The cumulative weight of evidence shows unambiguously that human players are handicapped under certain conditions. I call this scripting.

When you think about it (and I think about it more than is probably healthy), scripting is logical and necessary and, if done right, a great boon to any sports game. But I don’t think it’s been done right in PES for a couple of versions. It’s too heavy-handed, too obvious. Making a five-yard pass result in the ball bouncing off the human player’s all-star winger’s shins into touch, just so the CPU can have the ball back to maintain its preposterous level of pressure, is not best programming practice, if you ask me. Yes, Team Seabass might have been forced into this kind of measure after a decade of PES games and the increasing sophistication of the PES-playing public. But shouldn’t they be seeking another paradigm of Artificial Intelligence to put into their game by now? It’s a big, deep subject—a controversial subject for many—and I could write about it every day for the rest of the PES year if I wanted to. But I’ve got an accidental Cup final to get back to…

I didn’t exactly help myself. I went down to 10 men soon after the supercharged CPU script stopped running. It was my old nasty habit of frustratedly scything down attacking players almost for the hell of it. The Valencia player wasn’t even really going anywhere. Fernando Couto, my silky centre-back, made the long walk. I rejigged my formation, going to three centre-backs and leaving everything else as it was. If I hadn’t been behind I would have subbed a striker and gone with just two up front. But I had to get a goal back and I needed all my attacking options open to me.

In any case, I always play well with 10 men (and sometimes with 8 men). Sure enough, about 15 minutes from the end, I got my equaliser, a tap-in from Kim Cyun Hi after some nice build-up play and one-twos around the box. But I needed to win! This was a League six-pointer! So I still thought, anyway.

With my brave 10 men, I completely went for it. I’d rather lose this LEAGUE GAME while going all-out for a win than settle for a draw. I needed to close the gap at the top of the table. I tried and tried, but just couldn’t get another goal. I lived dangerously at the back, but (miraculously at times) avoided conceding. Eventually the final whistle went and I grimaced. A draw was not a good result for me. Valencia would keep their six-point lead with only a couple of games to go. Without really looking at the post-match screen, I pressed X to take me back to the ML menu…

But the screen cleared and suddenly I was playing again. Me, with my 10 men, against Valencia. With the score tied at 2-2. What the…? Only now did the penny drop. This was the first period of extra time! This was the Division 1 Cup Final! Arrgghhh…. I felt a little foolish, but like I said, it’s happened to me before so I wasn’t too freaked out. And I felt relieved. It meant that the six-pointer against them in the League was still to come. Oh, and I was playing the Cup final, and could still win it…

Or not. After all of that, I lost the Cup final on penalties. I scored one of my penalties. Just one. Pathetic, I know. I’m usually a lot better at penalties, even in PES where they’re more of a lottery than in real life. Why do some players mysteriously blast their penalties over the bar or wide? There is no way of controlling what they actually do with their penalty kicks. This badly needs to change.

Extra time had passed quickly, as it always does when you play 10-minute matches. I hadn’t really created anything. In truth I’d tensed up after I knew it was the Cup final. I played a lot more conservatively in the 30 minutes of extra time than in the last 30 minutes of normal time, when I played with a dashing, devil-may-care freedom. Perhaps it would have been better if I’d never known, and just gone on playing naturally… There’s a lesson about something or other in there somewhere.