In season 2021 of my Master League career on PES2008 (the truly groovy PSP/PS2 version; not the stinky, so-called ‘next-gen’ version), I was top of the league, top of my European Cup group, sailing through the Division 1 Cup… I was about four games short of the mid-season negotiations period, when I am planning to go all-in for the young Ronaldinho and Ronaldo, and any other extravagantly great Regenned players who take my fancy.

Things were going great, in other words. Yes, a banana skin or two were in order, and they duly came along.

I started drawing and losing games in the league, and I let a few results slip in Europe too. Maybe it’s because I’m playing on the PSP. The handheld console’s relatively cramped conditions and its lack of a second row of shoulder buttons means that the gameplay experience is slightly different from that on the bigger console. I think that the ‘word on the street’ is true. The game is harder on the PSP.

There’s also another factor to consider—I’m simply playing less PES2008. It’s true. I tend to slacken off at around this time of year as the next instalment approaches. And this year I have plenty of other great games to distract me into the bargain. I’ve particularly been playing a lot of FIFA08 over the past week.

So, all in all, the conditions are right for the CPU to strike back after several seasons of total dominance by me. I lost two games out of the four immediately prior to mid-season. And I could only draw the other two.

All four games were frustrating in different ways. I was careless, complacent, sloppy at the back. Or I was focused and disciplined, but the eternally cursed God Mode got to me. Or it was a mixture of the two. Overall, though, I have to say that I would never have had this kind of poor run last season or the season before, whether I was playing on the PSP or not. It really is a case of shifting priorities for me at the moment. I’ve taken my eye off the PES2008 ball, and the CPU is capitalising in full. Fair play to it. At least it will make my last few months of playing this ML career more interesting. Can I consistently win PES2008 trophies—and Trebles—playing less often, and solely on the PSP? We’ll see.

The poor run of results allowed Valencia to overtake me at the top of the table. For the first time in about five seasons I’m going into the mid-season negotiations not in 1st place. I’m 2nd, two points behind Valencia. I will still win this title, I think. (I hope.) But it’s a salutary reminder that there is no divine right for the human player in PES2008, no matter how well he (thinks he) knows the game.

Oh, and I also lost a game in Europe, putting my leadership of the group table to the test. I’m still top of it, but by goal difference. Fiorentina are in my group this year. I’d never met them before, and they were great in our first fixture, beating me 2-1.

I have to say that I love Fiorentina’s kit. To my untutored eye it’s a nice shade of purple. (The kind of purple that my mother would call mauve.) I’m looking forward to playing them in the return fixture, when some traditional PES revenge will be called for.

It was crunch time for me and my Treble. I’d just won the league title here in season 2020 of what is turning out to be another long Master League career. Winning the title on its own is pretty good, of course, but the Treble is where it’s all at in this game. I’ve already won a few Trebles, most recently last season. Back-to-back Trebles would be very nice indeed.

I was in the Division 1 Cup final and the European Championship final—i.e., PES’s Champions League equivalent. If the persistent rumour is true and Konami have secured the rights for the Champions League, will this competition have its ‘proper’ name in PES2009’s Master League? In other words, will this most prestigious of real-life Cup competitions find itself integrated into the often bizarre, made-up football game world of Master League?

I strongly doubt it. Somehow I can’t quite see Manchester Red pitching up against London Blue in the Champions League. Even with all the teams edited to look right, you’ve still only got four leagues. No, it just wouldn’t be right. It’d be a waste of the license. The debate is raging, but I’d bet on a standalone Champions League game using the PES engine coming out at some point in the 2008/2009 football game year.

Anyway, about those Cup finals. The ones I had to win in order to secure an historic consecutive Treble.

The Division 1 Cup final was first. It was against Basel—or FC Basel 1893, to give them their resounding full name. They were the easiest opponents I can remember having in a Cup final. I won the game at a canter, 3-0.

The European Cup final was the next and final component of the Treble. It was against Ajax—of Amsterdam, I often find myself mentally adding. I come from an era when TV and radio commentators always called them Ajax of Amsterdam. Sometime around the late 1980s they stopped doing that and started calling them simply Ajax, but for me the add-on element has hung around like an echo.

It was the first time I could remember playing Ajax (of Amsterdam) in this career. They were pretty tough, but not in a good sense. They were tough in the bad sense—in the sense that there seemed to be an underlying script at work that said “every time the human team scores, the CPU team scores.” Okay, my defending was probably suspect for some of their goals. Whatever, I won it 4-3.

And that was the Treble. I’d done it. Two in a row.

The only thing left to do was navigate my way through my remaining league fixtures without conceding too many more goals. I had another target to meet before season’s end: concede less than 20 goals. I was doing very well so far with just 14 goals against. If I could get through my last three league games without conceding more than 5 goals, it’d make it a truly remarkable season.

I’ll cut to the chase: I conceded 1 goal in each of the remaining games. I beat Sevilla 6-1 (always easy meat, them). I beat my next opponent 3-1. I drew the final game of the season 1-1. Conceding a goal in each of these games was slightly disappointing, and suspicious. I find that I am always suspicious of PES lately.

But I was comfortably under the 20-goals margin. I finished the season with 78 points. I was a massive 22 points ahead of a slightly resurgent Barcelona in second place. Valencia, after a poor season by their standards, were 4 points behind Barca. In other items of interest, Real Madrid managed to drag themselves up from mid-table to finish in 6th place. And Osasuna, my long-time nemesis, failed to win promotion back to Division 1. I won’t be seeing them until at least 2022 now. Ha.

I won 25 games, drew 3 games, and lost 2 games (boo). I scored 82 goals, and conceded just 17, giving me a final goal difference of +65.

All of which begs an obvious question: has PES2008 become too easy? My view right now is that it’s still a bit too early for me to tell. 2020 was a great season—a miracle year in so many ways. (But for those two defeats, it would have been just perfect…) It could be a one-off. If season 2021 is another season like this one, then yes, I’d say PES2008 is too easy for me. PES4 was the last PES game that I thought was a little too easy. We’ll see how PES2008 plays out after next season.

I had a good start to European competition in the group phase. I beat AC Milan 2-1 in a very testing game that had looked as though it was heading for 0-0 until the last 15 minutes.

Game 2 of the group was against one of my old PES adversaries, Galatasaray. They’ve tripped me up in so many ways in so many guises over the past three or four PESes that I always head out onto the pitch against them with some trepidation.

And this game justified my fears. They scored with their first attack of the game, in something like the 3rd minute. That’s how it stayed thereafter—the game ended 0-1 to them. I spent the entire match after they scored mounting the most insanely attacking spell of continuous pressure that I think I’ve ever mounted in PES2008 so far. But it just wasn’t to be. All my shots went wide or over, or the keeper saved them, or a defender got that annoying last-gasp blocking leg in the way… It’s a familiar story.

Back in the league I took on Barcelona for the first time this season and beat them 5-1. I was disappointed to concede that one goal—Rooney got it for them near the end. It was certainly 1 goal more than they deserved. It was a comprehensive rout and I could have had 10 goals.

Rooney is still running around up front for Barca at the age of 92, or whatever he is now. It all makes me feel impatient for the day when he finally retires and reappears as a 17-year-old Regen. I’ll sign him immediately when that happens, along with a few others—Torres and Gerrard to name just two.

In my mind’s eye I can see these glorious Regenned superstars, all in their early- to mid-twenties, playing in my team circa 2030 or so. It will happen.

I should just have time to get to season 2030 in this career before FIFA09 and PES2009 come along. At the moment I’m getting through a season roughly every week or ten days. I’ll be playing this ML career until at least the release of the full FIFA09, which will probably be in late September now. Assuming I maintain the same speed, and assuming that FIFA09 comes out on September 19 (for example), I could feasibly make it to 2030 just as the shrink-wrapping slides off my fresh-smelling new copy of FIFA09.

If FIFA09 is any good (and something tells me that it will be), it’ll be my sole game until the release of PES2009. If PES2009 is any good (and something tells me that it, ah, might be), I will continue playing both games for the whole 2008/9 season—although if FIFA09 is very, very good, I might play it as much as (or more) than PES2009, and the blog’s formula might have to change to reflect that.