PES Chronicles

In Master League you often end up playing the same teams back-to-back in the League and in European groups. It’s one of the many consequences of the Master League world being so small. Master League is in urgent need of an overhaul. I think we need more than just four leagues with two divisions in each. We need about twenty leagues with four divisions each, in my opinion. It needs to be as close to the real world as possible. Yes, I’ll say it, it needs to be as close to FIFA’s Manager Mode setup as possible. I’d like to be able to play a Pro Evo career in that kind of wider footballing world.

Real Madrid are in my European Championships group. They’re also one of my main rivals in the league. They’re not a great team in my ML and never have been, but they’re still no pushovers. They can still give me a good game.

In our league encounter they took the lead, a little luckily. I equalised soon afterward (which is always nice), albeit rather luckily with a Schwarz header that first went down into the ground then looped up and over the keeper into the net. 1-1 it stayed from then on. I’d just accepted that it was going to end 1-1 when I had a chance with Schwarz. He was in the box and I was just about to pull the trigger when the CPU defender viciously scythed him down from behind. Not even Pro Evo could deny me such a clear-cut penalty, but the CPU defender got away with a yellow card. For me, that would have been red.

Andy Cole was my penalty kicker. I felt beforehand that I’d miss the penalty whoever took it, so I decided I might as well leave Andy Cole to carry the can. Penalties in PES have always been totally random. They have no actual skill element that I have ever been able to detect. If anybody out there believes otherwise—or, preferably, knows otherwise—then I’d love to hear from them. I did no more than flick the analogue stick toward the right of the net, and tap shoot. Andy Cole ran up and blasted the ball two yards over the crossbar, and the match ended 1-1.

Then Real Madrid beat me in the first game of our European Championship group. The match started pretty tamely, but I had Del Piero sent off for a nothing foul in midfield. The CPU player was miles from my goal with my entire defence in the way. My tackle with Del Piero was a slightly mistimed one from the side, the kind of tackle that’s a yellow card at most. But on this occasion it was a straight red card.

Despite the setback I took the lead. That often happens when I play with 10 men (and sometimes with less than 10 men). I play superbly and wonder how I can ever be beaten. But on this occasion, it was not to be. I admit to letting my concentration slip and allowing a soft equaliser to go in before half time. Then, in the second half, Real got their winner. I couldn’t come back, and thus I lost the opening group game. I hate doing that.

In the league I finally came up against Deportivo la Coruna. I’ve had a great start to the league season, and so have they. I beat them 3-2 with two good goals from Henry—his first for me—one of them a true poacher’s goal after a very strange short back-pass from a CPU defender to the goalkeeper.

For my second game in Europe I brought all my concentration to bear. Another defeat was unthinkable. I’m going for a Treble this season.

Benfica, another old ‘friend’ of mine from this ML career, were next. I scored early and hung on until the end to win 1-0. I had to really dig in and withstand some ridiculous pressure and manipulation of the game. I absolutely hate in PES2008 how your players are often forced to run on rails with the ball at their feet and carry the ball over the line for throw-ins and corners to the CPU. Before anyone mentions super-cancel, it doesn’t arrest the progress of my players’ running on rails. It’s a definite feature of the programming this year, just one of the myriad ways in which the AI is granted an advantage in times of trouble.

Never mind. It hadn’t cost me this time and I’d got the win I wanted. It makes the group table look a little healthier, although I hope that first-game defeat doesn’t come back to haunt me further down the line.

Yesterday a rumour appeared on WENB to the effect that PES2009 might—just might—be released on 17th October, which would be earlier than usual this year. We’re so used by now to the game appearing on a late Friday in October, that a release date of either 24/10 or 31/10 was pretty much assumed to be the case. Assumed by me, anyway. But if there’s any substance to the rumour, then we may well be looking at a UK release date of 17/10.

Last year, I started using GAME.co.uk for all my big pre-release pre-orders. I’d heard that they commonly sent out games in time to arrive at least a day early, and often two days early. Sure enough, I received FIFA08 from them two days before it landed on retail shelves. The same thing happened with PES2008.

The only time they’ve let me down was for Metal Gear Solid 4, which had the cheek to arrive on the actual release date, not before. Huh. I wasn’t impressed. But I’ll be using GAME again this year for PES, and hoping for early delivery again. I’m not on any kind of affiliate whatchamacallit thing with them. I’m just highly recommending them as a probable way to get the game early, is all. If history is any guide, and the release-date rumour is true, then I could have PES2009 as early as 15/10, which is (I’ve just counted) 106 days away. Hurrah! (Or how do the internet kids put it? Woo-hoo? Woot? Something like that.)

I hope the rumour’s true and PES2009 does come out early. If anything, I think Konami should move heaven and earth (and then move heaven some more) to release the game at the end of September, never mind October. By mid-to-late October, football game fans will have had several weeks to bed down and get all smoochy with EA’s hotly-anticipated FIFA09. The whole reason EA settled on September for its annual release was to beat PES to the shelves and rack up the sales before the real football game arrived in town. Well, times have changed, and I think Konami know it. So would a PES2009 release date of, say, October 3rd be too much to hope for? Probably.

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I’m still getting through the matches in my Master League career on PES2008. I’m at the start of season 2019 and top of the league on goal difference after 5 wins out of 5. My opponents in game 6 were my old enemy from the past, Valencia. I’m playing great and confidence is high. When you play PES with maximum confidence, I’ve noticed, almost nothing can get in your way. I hammered Valencia 3-0, taking particular pleasure in keeping a clean sheet.

One of my aims for this season is to concede less than 20 goals. I’ve been frustrated in recent seasons by the leakiness of my defence. I want to determine if it’s just me playing badly, or if the game absolutely must score some goals at certain times. The jury is still out on that one, really.

Six wins out of six, then, but I was still only top of the league on goal difference. Deportivo in second place had matched me win for win. They’ve got a nice little 100% record of their own going on there. My goal difference really is worth an extra point. It’s +23 after six games of a thirty-game season. Extrapolating to the end of the season, that’d leave me with a GD of +115. In theory. I’d love to get even half of that in practice.

This season I’ve rejigged my forward line, removing the talented Kim Cyun Hi from the starting role that he’d enjoyed for the past few years. What games he has played so far this season have been in place of Giggs whenever the latter has been unfit.

Playing a right-footed player on the left sometimes works, sometimes not. The best striker I’ve ever played with in PES was Dennis Bergkamp in PES5. He was a right-footer who ploughed a mean furrow on the left side of my front 3 across a dozen amazing seasons. (Some of that amazingness can be seen here and here.) Playing Kim Cyun Hi on the left up front seems to be his best position for me, crazily. He’s scored more goals for me so far this season than any other striker, and that’s even without playing in every game. I’m considering bringing Kim back at this position permanently, and moving Giggs back to midfield. I’ll see how the next few games unfold and then I’ll decide.

All things that have a beginning must come to an end. Winning runs in Pro Evo are no exception to this natural law, alas. Predictably, it wasn’t Barca or Real or any remotely ‘big’ team what dunnit. Real Mallorca held me to sticky 1-1 draw. I call it sticky because it was just one of those games where it seems your players run through treacle and are scared of the ball. I considered this game two points dropped, and so did the league table. Deportivo won their corresponding fixture to overtake me at the top. They won’t last long.

Season 2019 in my never-ending Master League had already got off to a flier with massive wins that left me top of the table with a hefty goal difference. My aims for this season are threefold: win a Treble of League, Cup, and European Cup; remain unbeaten all season in the League; and concede less than 20 goals all season in the League. If I continue as I started, I should sweep the board in all three categories.

Ah, but Pro Evolution Soccer is a canny mistress. At all times she knows exactly what you want and how to stop you getting it. Anybody who has played PES, and Master League in particular, for any great length of time knows precisely what I’m talking about. The suddenly impregnable AI defence. The suddenly useless world class players on your team. The superhuman AI goalkeeper. The magnetic posts and crossbar on the AI goal. Yes, yes, yes. All of this is so well-known that it’s hardly worth going on about.

Often the best matches on PES are when the game is blatantly out to stop you, but you win through regardless. My next league game was against Recreativo de Huelva, a surprise package over the past few seasons who were even now lurking just below me in the table on goal difference. Perhaps this was an early six-pointer against a new power in the league. (My old adversaries, Valencia, were down in mid-table. I’m not fooled by that.)

The Recreativo match was tough, but somehow not as tough as it could have been. I won 3-1. It was one of those matches where you struggle to get the first goal, but after it comes it’s as if the CPU just wilts, and you dominate the rest of the game. As ever, the CPU scored itself a consolation goal late on. If I’m going to fulfil my aim of conceding less than 20 goals this season, I’ll have to find a way to stop the CPU grabbing these ‘auto-goals’ as I call them.

After Recreativo I met Basel, and the CPU was still in its funny mood. Again it was a struggle to get the upper hand. It was 0-0 for a long time and Basel were a constant threat. By the 75th minute I had more or less settled for a draw in my mind when I brought on Giggs as a substitute (he’d not been fit enough to start). I had the ball with Bradley in the centre circle and played a raking pass out to the left wing towards Giggs. I decided to hit the ball first-time with him. The moment I hit it, I knew it was on its way into the net and that I would then hold on to win the match 1-0. PES2008 has a lovely side-footed shooting animation that never fails to delight—especially when the shot results in a great flighted goal, as it did on this occasion.

My next game was an almost routine 5-0 hammering of Sevilla. I’ve played five games and won five games. I’ve scored 23 goals and conceded just 3 goals. I’ve had superb starts like this before and gone on to have disappointing seasons, so I’m not fooled. I’m being careful and I’ll try to remain careful.

Below me, Deportivo la Coruna—who have done nothing in this Master League so far—are also on a 100% run. The current third-placed team, my old adversaries Valencia, will be my next opponents.

And so I begin season 2019 in my continuing Master League career on PES2008—the very good PS2/PSP version of PES2008. Not the other version that must not be named…

It felt great to start the season after I had a welcome little break of a few days. I just had to play Metal Gear Solid 4 all the way to the end. As a long-term Metal Gear fan, I found it a truly epic and unforgettable experience, although I can’t imagine what anyone coming to Metal Gear for the first time would make of it all. For me the last section—Act 5—dipped in gameplay quality after a superb beginning and middle, but the whole was still an unmissable, fitting finale to the Solid Snake era. As I’ve opined previously, MGS4 is a fine example of what Konami as a publisher can produce when it allows developers the personnel, resources, and time needed to deliver the goods. We can only hope that PES2009 is currently receiving the same kind of loving attention that obviously went into every single aspect of MGS4.

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My theme for season 2019 is: keep it tight at the back. I’ve spent too many seasons conceding too many goals. It’s no wonder I’ve hardly won anything compared to similar stages in previous PES years. There’s no doubt in my mind that even this ‘classic’ PES2008 is easier than it was in previous years. It’s easier to create chances and it’s easier to score than ever—particularly from long range (see below). But it also seems a lot easier to concede goals. I don’t seem to be able to stop the CPU getting a goal when it really, really wants one. But then there’ll be other times when I do seem able to stop the CPU even when it’s in full-on God Mode, so I don’t know.

What I plan for this season is to shut up shop at the back. I want to make defence my first priority in every game. Last season I conceded 24 league goals. This season I’d like to concede less than 20 league goals. I’m not too bothered about how many goals I concede in the Cup matches as long as I win them.

So I’ve got 3 main aims for the season, which I’ll list here, for posterity. No doubt it’ll be amusing to look back on them as each one is FAILed…

• Win a Treble of League, Cup, and European Cup
• Remain unbeaten in the League all season
• Concede <20 League goals all season

Yes, I’m setting myself up for a mighty fall, laying it all out in the open. But I think it helps to have definite aims for each season as time goes by. It helps to keep things alive and ticking over.

My first actual game of the season was against an old ‘friend’, Espanyol. I played with caution at the start, keeping in mind my aim of conceding fewer goals. The result was a 4-1 half-time lead that turned into 8-1 before 70 minutes were on the clock. There’s nothing like starting the season at a gallop.

Naturally I wanted to get to the almost mythical 10 goals mark, but it wasn’t to be. The CPU defence closed around me like a vice whenever I advanced on their goal. And they’d managed to get themselves a consolation goal into the bargain—something I was mightily unhappy about, because it felt very much like one of those goals that just cannot be prevented. Never mind. It was only 1 goal.

I’ve always loved scoring long-range goals in PES. In the rout of Espanyol I scored what is my longest-range goal yet. Just over a month ago I posted a goal that I scored with Bradley from level with the outer edge of the centre circle. This one below, from Prieto this time, was about a yard further back. See how the ball flies…

These kinds of mega-long-range goals are pretty common in PES2008. A bit too common for my liking. I’m not saying that I’ve stopped enjoying scoring them. I’d just prefer it if they were a bit harder to pull off. One of the many things that I would like to see in PES2009 is an altered shooting mechanic that returns these goals to being the rarity they were until PES4. I wouldn’t even mind if they were made impossible for any but a select handful of players to score, and then only once in a blue moon.

After Espanyol, my second game of the season was against Valenciennes. I won it 6-1, another great performance that was again only slightly spoiled by conceding another ‘auto-goal’ to the CPU near the end.

These two results left me top of the league, of course. Already I’ve got the kind of goal difference that’s worth an extra point in its own right. It’s early days yet, but I don’t foresee much trouble retaining my league title this season at the very least.