PES Chronicles

Season 13 has ended. I’ve really zipped through this one. The League was safe. I won it for the fourth time in a row. The latter part of the season was all about my Champions League adventure. Unlike last season and the season before, I had a decent run in the knockout stages. No, I have not won the thing, but I got as far as the semi-final this time. Here is a very brief highlights package—including, at the end, a really awful goal that helped to knock me out:

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My first knockout opponents were Stade Rennais. It was really scary given that at the same stage in two previous seasons I’ve been eliminated by supposedly minor French sides. Indeed the first leg was one of the toughest matches I can ever remember playing in PES, ever. It really is the case that the AI’s speed and overall toughness gets ratcheted up in the knockout stages. Whether this is in keeping with real life or not is another debate.

Personally I like the added difficulty, but has there got to be so much SPEED? This is true for the whole game, not just in the Champions League sections of it. All last summer we heard great things about how PES2010 was finally a proper, grown-up, slowed-down effort. Again and again (and again), that was what the previewers said: PES2010 was a slow game. You get time on the ball. Rejoice!

But then the game came out and, speed-wise, it was a great disappointment. It’s often far too fast for it to be anything but a minus point in the overall scheme of things. Konami simply didn’t have the balls to stick with the code that was shown to previewers, something I hope those previewers will remember this coming summer. We can only hope that everybody holds onto their respective balls for PES2011.

So I beat Stade Rennais 2-1 at home, and then lost 1-2 at their place. With ten minutes to go, extra time was beckoning, but then I got the winner.

Next up in the quarter finals were Porto, my divisional rivals. They were absolute monsters. I thought the speed was 100mph against Stade Rennais; here, it felt more like 1000mph. Once again after two legs we were tied at 2-2, and this time I went into extra time. Penalties were just around the corner. I haven’t taken more than two penalties in all 13 seasons of Master League so far. I’ve never been in a penalty shootout. I didn’t fancy my chances. With seconds left I lobbed a hopeful aerial through-ball in the general direction of Munitis. One fortunate bounce later, I took a potshot, and the ball hit a defender’s knee and looped over the Porto keeper into the net… Yesssssss.

My semi-final opponents were a team called ZAR BLANCO/AZUL. I’d never heard of them before I met them here, although it seems they do have quite a profile in their native – er – where the hell are they from? Google is not my friend in this instance. It seems they’re from Pro Evolution Soccer land(?), although other results indicate… Uruguay? Can this be right?

That’s their First XI, on the left. They wore purple, or dark pink depending on your perspective, and just like their predecessors they were beasts to play against, only even more so.

I did well to limit the damage in the first leg at their place, which I lost 2-0. Once again the game felt as if it was on fast-forward. A million miles an hour. In the second leg, just as frantic and stupidly fast, I did get an early goal to give myself a massive chance. But as is so often the way with me and PES2010, I then conceded a goal straight from their kick-off. That was bad enough, but just seconds later I conceded yet another one, and it was the killer. It’s the final goal in the clip above, and it was a proper howler. The score was 1-3 on the day, 1-5 on aggregate. That’s how it ended.

In the League, I romped to the title with a few games to spare. The chief interest in the closing stages was whether I could win my first Golden Boot with Zaki. It wasn’t to be, sadly. I scored a few, but the AI player at the head of the queue did as well.

I won the title by 9 points, but my goals-scored tally was the worst it’s been for a few seasons. I’ll have to keep an eye on that situation and go hunting for a top striker if required. Here’s the full final league table—which shows an interesting turn of events for Manchester City, Chelsea, and Liverpool:

The team of the season was a nice bonus: my created player, ‘not-Greg’, won player of the year. I had three players in the overall Division 1 First XI. My two full-backs are both Youth team promotees. I’m proud of them. Proud!

And so that’s that. Season 13 done and dusted, on with season 14. Year 2022-2023. The quest for the Treble continues.

The mid-season transfer window in season 12 of my Master League career in PES2010 has come and gone. I had two big AI offers on the table for two of my strikers. Tanaka, my 78-rated journeyman Japanese forward, had been on the transfer list since before the start of the season. Only one offer was submitted for him: £24.3m. He’s a slow WF/SS/CF hybrid who barely gets a game for me nowadays. What was I going to do?

Also on the transfer list was Sazi. At one time he was my main man, the apple of my eye, the essential striker whom I thought I needed to win any match. But he’s been seriously lacking in recent seasons, particularly since I paid £2m to equip him with two extra skill cards. Ever since that time, he’s been a shadow of the player he was before. I have serious doubts as to whether the ability to purchase sill cards for players is a worthwhile feaure of the game, or if it’s just glorified makework.

I would have accepted an offer for Sazi of £4m. The offer that came in for him was £16m. So I would easily recoup the money spent on useless skill cards, and then some.

It was a traditional ML no-brainer on both counts. £42,000,000 for two players who hardly get a game for me nowadays. I sold both of them without any regrets.

As for transfers in, I only managed to bring in one new player. I did keep trying for Raul, Scholes, plus a few other genuinely first-class ML performers, but none of them would come to me. I’m pretty sure my team reputation is still below a certain threshold. There was no new talent worth harvesting in my Youth team.

The one player I brought in was a young goalkeeper, a 75-rated Gianluigi Buffon. I spent £1.5m on him. Currently 18 years old, he’ll take over as my #1 keeper in a season or two. I’ve got no problems with Zuberbuhler at the moment—in fact he’s been pretty impressive. I’m looking a good way ahead to the future, is all. I’ll try to sell Fatecha, now my 3rd-choice keeper, at the end of the season.

This lack of buying means that I am very rich indeed. I’ve got about £60m in the bank. The days of struggling to pay my bills at the end of a season are a long, long way behind me. I’ll start spending it all in the next transfer window—if the game will let me.

It occurs to me that I’ve not yet posted an actual, proper First XI during this whole career so far. Every squad image I’ve shown has been jumbled up. So here it is. The First XI seen in the latest squad list on the left currently is my preferred selection, game after game, as long as all are available. With this line-up I can give any team in the ML world a good game—usually…

After a slump in league form I went on a run of 6 wins out of 7. I am now back up to 2nd place, level on points with Man Utd and just trailing on goal difference. In the current crop of league games I had a thrilling clash with Spurs that I won 2-1 with a fine late winner from Zaki.

Sadly, I have been knocked out of the Champions League in the first knockout round for the second season in a row. It’s the same old story. Once I get to the knockout stages, the difficulty seems to go up another notch or two. Last season I was taken apart by Sochaux. This season my quarter final nemesis was in the form of RC Lens.

In PES2010 such teams as Sochaux and Lens are better than 2009 Barcelona and 1990s Milan and 1970 Brazil and late 70s/early 80s Liverpool all put together and pumped full of amphetamines. I don’t know what it is. Obviously I’m a poor player, so that doesn’t help, but it seems to me that strange things happen in these games. The aggression is turned up to 11. The ‘tangle and snatch’ effect that constantly wrests possession away is turned up to 12. All in all I couldn’t live with them over the two legs. I lost the first leg at their ground 2-0, and I lost the second leg at mine 1-2. A feeble exit. I really will have to do better. A Treble may never happen at this rate.

So all I have left to go for now is the league title. With 14 matches left, I think I’ll do it.

And season 12 had started off so well… I was 2nd after 10 games, scoring freely, and everything was fine. Just dandy. But now things have changed. I’ve played my way through to the mid-season point—that’s another 8 league matches, and all of the Champions League group stage. In the latter competition, I’ve sailed through, no problems at all. But in the League? There I have hit a mysterious slump.

Suddenly it’s a run of games where I can’t win, and can hardly score a goal—and they’re all league games. In the Champs League I’m as free-scoring as I’ve been all season, and winning. In the league it’s as if an invisible hand is squeezing all the pizzazz out of my team. I smell a giant rat.

I had a key game against Tottenham, currently the all-conquering new stars of Division 1. I won it 1-0 with an ugly, deflected, scrambled goal in the last minute. There hasn’t been much else to cheer me up. After a few dodgy seasons, Manchester City are back as a major force. They’ve battered me every time I’ve met them this season, and they did so again, 0-3 at home.

The PES2010 AI has a method of getting the ball off you that I call ‘tangle and snatch’. Tangle and snatch. It might sound like the next buddy cop movie, or a corny, straight-to-digital-TV cop show, but it’s not that. It’s what PES2010 does to you when it decides it wants the ball and you are no longer allowed to have it. As is well known, response times in PES2010 are not what they were in previous iterations of the franchise. This enables the AI to swarm you with its players, and tangle you up, and snatch possession.

I know, I know. I just need to play better. I do know that. But I think I’m allowed to nurse some PES-based paranoia. When you sink this many hours into a game (217 and counting), you’re entitled to think it might be coming to get you sometimes.

After this very dodgy run of poor league form, I find myself 10 points off the pace at the halfway stage. The title is not out of reach. As long as I play well enough, the same invisble hand that I’ve sensed keeping me down will raise me up. Or bring other teams down, which amounts to the same thing.

My Champions League group has been a cakewalk. I had trouble in one match, against FC Basel 1895, who turned in the statutory Brazilliant performance that random teams in ML have sometimes just got to do. Otherwise I won them all and scored a nice few goals. I even simmed the meaningless last fixture against Atalanta. I haven’t simmed a match for about 8 seasons now. I’ll only ever do so under circumstances like this, when there could be no effect on any league standings. The game awarded me a 2-1 win, which was good of it.

I’ll face RC Lens in the quarter final. This is the stage where I hit a brick wall last season. I’ll try to be careful against Lens. Also in the draw—for the second season running—was PES United, among a few other bizarre teams.

Finally a few goals from the current period. The frst two are both from McCann, my Youth DMF who has turned into a 26-year-old veteran of many a midfield skirmish. Both of his goals look like the same goal, on first viewing. But they’re really not. This impression is boosted by them both coming against teams wearing near-identical kits: Arsenal in the first case, Aston Villa in the second. And finally in theclip there’s a super-duper-long-ranger from Zaki in the Champions League. I do love me some distance shooting. I don’t mean to resurrect old grievances, but SUCK ON THIS, you timid, shot-shy Gamescom people!

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The Treble is over for this season. I’ve been eliminated from the Champions League in the first knockout round. And then I was dumped out of the D1 Cup, at the semi-final stage. At least I’ve still got the League to go for…

The AI team that booted me out of the Champions League was FC Sochaux-Montbeliard. It’s rarely the Inter Milans or the Barcelonas that cause you problems in Master League. It’s nearly always the teams you’ve only vaguely heard of in real life.

I really lost the tie in the first leg at my ground. Sochaux scored two good goals before half-time. In hindsight, I then tried much too hard to get at least one goal back. I thought it’d make the return leg more straightforward. Silly of me. I should have shut up shop and taken the 0-2 defeat. The AI was in a mood to punish me. And it punished me severely. One of my incessant 10-man attacks was broken up and Sochaux scored again on the counter. Final score: 0-3. Careless, totally careless of me.

I gave it a good go in the second leg, but it wasn’t to be. It was one of those matches where I had a lot of possession, but rarely actually created anything. The AI was in full-on frustration mode. 0-0 it finished, pretty tamely. I kept going until the end, of course, but eventually time ran out. I was out.

I stared at the screen. There went the Treble for this season. Oh well. That’s fine: maybe next season, and all that. I do go on about the Treble a lot, but it’s not the be-all and end-all of my Master League ambitions. The Treble is more of a convenient narrative frame for these blog postings than an actual thing of vital importance to my enjoyment of Master League.

And I still had a League and Cup double to go for. But that was soon ended. The amazingly fantastic, brilliantly skilful, formidably strong Standard Liege beat me 2-0 at their place, and got themselves a creditable 1-1 draw at mine. I was out of the Cup. I stared at the screen. Oh well…

At least now I can concentrate on the League. Where things are still going well. That’s the great thing about a League competition, and the reason why they’re prized so highly in real life. Leagues really do establish who’s the best, because they’re rarely decided by a one-off fixture. Even when they are decided by a single fixture, it’s no good crying about it, because what about all the previous fixtures that you could and should have won, to avoid getting to that point?

Having said that, PES traditionally loves to engineer exciting finishes to league seasons. Even though I’ve been doing well and winning matches, I’m still only second. At least 4 teams are in with a shout. With 9 matches left in the season, it could go right to the wire.