PES Chronicles

In the end, I was lucky to finish 3rd in the league this season. With 9 matches left I was sitting quite comfortably in 2nd place, with a theoretical chance of catching the runaway leaders, Porto. I believed I was a certainty to finish 2nd…

For the first 4 or 5 of those last 9 matches I suffered a most peculiar run of matches without a win. I had losses that I would struggle to explain. I played against a few of the bottom clubs, who all played considerably above themselves to beat me or squeeze draws out of tight games.

Minor teams in Master League who play like 1970 Brazil on amphetamines is not a new thing, of course. For all the series’ much-vaunted realism, this has been a constant (and IMO disappointing) inconsistency in the mode. West Ham, a bottom 6 side all season, beat me 1-0 and played better than any other side I’ve faced all season. I include my two Cup nemeses, Man Utd and Lyon, in that assessment. Liverpool, a bottom 3 side(!), held me to a 0-0. Burnley beat me 3-1. Eventually I got myself together and scraped enough wins to hold 3rd spot in the end. But it was tight. Very tight. At one stage I was down in 7th place, looking at a Europa League slot next season. I’d have absolutely hated that.

Zaki, my main striker, returned from long-term injury. He was eerily just like a real player struggling to get back in the groove. He did next to nothing in all 9 matches. He was a total shadow of his former self. He got one goal and a few assists, and did nothing else. This was the player who spent last season and the first part of this season tearing up trees out on the pitch. He’ll be 32 next season. Is he finished in my team? I’ll have to see.

Enough whining. Here’s the final table:

Liverpool are relegated. It’s a shocker for those of us who remember the years when the real-life Liverpool were the Imperial Rome of the football world.

The team of the season featured 3 of my players. My created player, ‘not-Greg’, is 30 now and starting to lose a point or two on his stats. I think he’s got another good few seasons in him yet—and he does still pop up with great goals, such as the second one in today’s clip. The first is from Nakamura, another 30-something player:

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My Capuano mini-obsession continues. I love to check on his growth. He’s gained yet another point of OVR rating—up to 92 now. And his AMF position training is complete. At first his rating for the new position was disappointingly low, around 68, but after a few matches it was already creeping up. At the time of writing he rates 78 in the AMF position. I’m playing him there regularly, and I’ve adjusted his focus training to develop his shooting and dribbling some more. He’s currently the only truly left-footed AMF I’ve got.

I’ve been toying with some craziness in relation to Capuano. Many years ago I heard about a Football Manager fanatic who liked one of his players so much that he sent off for a club shirt bearing his name. Er…

Well… I’ve had a look around to see if I could do a similar thing with Capuano. The real Coventry City’s online store would have been more than happy to oblige me. (The image is a screengrab from a ‘build your own shirt’ widget on the site. 16 is Capuano’s squad number at my Coventry City.)

£33 including delivery… But, no, I didn’t ‘pull the trigger’, as the saying has it. They were out of stock of the long-sleeved version of the shirt, which is the one I would have gone for.

A disturbing twist in the tale? Of course. What isn’t disturbing about a grown man being moved to acquire an article of clothing branded with the name of a fictitious player in a football computer game? I might as well be one of those Japanese who dresses up as Zelda and prances around with a plastic sword.

And yet, and yet… I think it’d be a really nice memento to have and keep for the future. So I am still looking for a Capuano football shirt. If/when I get it, I’ll show it. That’s a promise.

So far, my PES2010 Master League adventure has been notable for the lack of big-name players I’ve been able to acquire for my team. It’s very unlike previous versions of the mode, where you could equip yourself pretty much at will with all the Ronaldos and Platinis and whoever else took your fancy.

Up to this point, starting season 14, my best players have mostly been home-grown, or players that aren’t really household names in real-life. Amir Zaki and Pedro Munitis have been amazing for me. Nakamura has been evergreen from the first season he arrived. He’s currently 28 years old and has just hit the 90 OVR rating mark. My own ‘not-Greg’ created player has been an important midfielder. And I’ve had many, many talents come up from the Youth team and establish themselves—players like Sazi, McCann, Cejumi, and Capuano, to name just a few.

For just one example: CAPUANO. I signed him from the Youth team as a 17-year-old rated around 65 OVR. Look at him now, aged 24. I’ll never sell him. Well, perhaps an offer in the region of £100m would give me something to think about, but for anything less than that, the answer’d be NO. He’s got some growing to do yet. I’m going to retrain him to add AMF to his repertoire of positions. I’ll retool his focus training accordingly and beef up his shooting and dribbling. I’m genuinely excited to see how it all turns out. Will it wreck what he already is? I won’t know unless I try.

Those of us who’ve always played Master League love it for the in-depth immersion and sense of involvement with the team that it brings as part of the overall package. PES2010’s all-new Master League  is delivering on this front in bucketloads. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: for me Master League is PES.

Okay, time to stop gushing and get on with season 14. I changed both kits. Home: a dark ‘Croatia-style’ kit. Away: a yellowy ‘Galatasaray-style’ kit.

Once again I’ve had minimal activity in the pre-season transfer market. After wages and costs I had £20,000,000 to play with. I tried again for Scholes, Pirlo, etc., as I have done for the last four or five transfer windows now. But none of them would come to me.

I think it’s a flaw in the otherwise excellent new transfer system that I have no real idea why some players won’t sign. I am left to guess that it’s due to my relatively low club ranking. Currently I’m only 50th in the ML world, and presumably those players want to go somewhere more prestigious. That’s fine. A few Cups, ideally a few Doubles or Trebles, should soon fix that. And it’s not as if I’m aching to get hold of the big names. I’m having possibly my best-ever Master League experience with the players I can get. Who needs Scholes & co.? Not me. (But it would be nice, anyway.)

With nobody signing up, then, I settled for recruiting one new player from the Youth team. GATTUSO is the player in question, and obviously I expect great things from him in the future.

In the League, I navigated my way very carefully indeed through the opening round of the D1 Cup. I’ve been eliminated at this stage two seasons in a row. Maximum focus and concentration. AEK Athens, at home, first leg: beat them 2-0, easily. Second leg was a predictable torrid affair that I always felt I was struggling to maintain any semblance of control in. 0-0 it finished. I am through to the second round for the first time in 3 seasons. The Treble is still on.

Patchy form in the League. Now that I’m pretty much always in the hunt for the title, I’ll stop posting screenshots of the league table in every post until things get interesting near the end of the season. Having a league table picture in every post is a bit much, and largely pointless. I’m currently 5th after 7 matches with a record of W3 D2 L1. One of the victories was a momentous 6-1 drubbing of Spurs, who are still a top side in my ML world, so it was a notable victory indeed. Spurs’ First XI is starting to look very weird—as they all are, really:

In Europe, there’s a familiar look and feel to my Champions League group. The other teams are Juventus, Helsinki, and Rosenborg. I was up against Rosenborg last year, and this is now the third time in four seasons that I’ve faced Juventus in the CL group stage. The campaign hasn’t started very well, either. I was 2-0 up at home against Juve but shipped two late goals to only draw 2-2. That felt bad enough, but then I lost 4-1 away to Rosenborg. Their four goals included this extraordinary own-goal from my defender, Carragher—or was it an own-goal?

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It certainly looked and felt, at the time, like an own goal. My keeper’s non-reaction supports this: his lack of any kind of response is typical of the code not knowing what to do. It happened durng a period of play where I was getting very frustrated, which for me always means lots of clamping and button-mashing. Here I was mashing the slide-tackle button, trying desperately to stop what felt like irresistible AI momentum towards my goal. I saw my power meter charge up just before the kick happened, which makes me think the game deemed Carragher to have the ball under his control for a split second, and this really was an own-goal. But the second replay suggests the AI player’s foot was in there, doing something…

Whatever happened, whoever kicked it, I was very unhappy with my keeper. Zuberbuhler still is a good keeper, overall, but he’s started showing these moments of eccentricity that are costing me. It might really be time for Regen Buffon to claim the No. 1 shirt, or at least occupy it for a while. I’m undecided.

Whew. First of all: the AI has scored yet another amazing flicked goal against me (see the end of this post). Second of all: I have won the Division 1 title again.

That’s now three Division 1 titles in succession. Does this have any implications for the future of PES2010 and me? Is the notorious difficulty curve starting to flatten out? It’s too early to tell. For me, the main criterion that makes a PES too easy is how quickly I can win a Treble, and then whether I can win the Treble every season without much effort. That stage hasn’t materialised in PES2010—not yet anyway—and I hope it never will. In theory, I could win the title every season from now until the end of time and I still wouldn’t necessarily think things were getting a bit easy. The Treble is still a long way out of sight.

PES2010 made it tight until the end of the season. This is a venerable Master League tradition. A ‘rubberband AI’ setup in the league table will ensure that things remain close until the end. If you’re trailing behind, the teams above you will lose and draw just enough times to keep you interested; if you’re the one who’s up on top of the league, you’ll lose and draw just enough to keep the AI teams in the hunt. This effect varies with your own native ability, of course, but it’s been a definite part of Master League since it came into being. I don’t really like it, but anyway. Whatever. I could always ‘go play FIFA’ (which has much the same ‘feature’ in its career mode’s leagues)…

Here’s the final table:

The shenanigans all started with a fixture against the second-placed team, Manchester United. They’d been my closest challengers for the top spot. I was 5 points ahead with about 6 matches to go. As an ML veteran, I knew that I was foredoomed to lose this game. Yes, it could be argued that this perception—this fixed belief—contributed more than anything else to me losing the match—and I did lose it.

I lost it 1-4, at home, an unheard-of result for me this season. I was fortunate to get a goal back when Man Utd were only 0-1 up. The remainder of the game was a catalogue of stumbles, misplaced passes, and shots that skewed crazily wide. I hit the post and crossbar three times. Meanwhile Man Utd were making hay up front, and had streaked into a three-goal lead by the time the final whistle blew.

That left me 2 points ahead with 5 matches remaining, and from that point it was nip and tuck all the way to the finishing line. I had to stay ahead on points. My goal difference was good—I’ve had my best-ever goalscoring season—but Man Utd’s was better.

I lost and drew just enough of the remaining matches to ensure that the final match would be appropriately tension-filled. I won the final match, and as it happened Man Utd lost theirs.

All in all season 12 has been a bumpy ride on the League front, but I still got there and took the crown. Three in a row now. What a shame I can’t seem to get myself together yet in either of the Cup compeititons. There is a hidden higher difficulty level once you hit the Champions League knockout stages! I’m sure of it. Incidentally, the Best XI for the Champions League this season year shows how time is really starting to pass in my ML world. Regen Giggs and one or two others are familiar names, but the rest are alien to me.

I was disappointed not to take the top scorer title with Munitis. Here’s how the race for the Golden Boot turned out:

After a promising start, Munitis faded slightly from mid-season on. It was a definite slump that suspiciously coincided with me purchasing two skill cards for him. I don’t like ‘em, you know, these skill cards… But the jury is still out.

I am insanely wealthy in the game now. The screenshot on the left was taken immediately after I was awarded £15m for winning the title. With sponsorship money I’ve actually got over £82,000,000 now.

I could buy so many great players, but none of them will come to me. I will keep trying, but I suspect I’ll need to win a Cup or two before the biggest big names will sign up.

Season 13 is next, and I’m not even slightly jaded with PES2010 yet. I still want to go on and play more.

Finally today, another stylish flicked goal from the AI. The first one I posted was something special—this one is incredible:

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Season 12: year 2020-2021. Is it just me who fully expects the real world in 2020-2021 to be ruled by motorcycle gangs and cannibal cults?

I’m very happy to be at this stage in PES2010. In the PS2 era it was routine for me to get this far—and usually further. After the last two years I never thought it could happen in a next-gen PES2010, but I’m delighted that it is happening now.

PES2010 is a great PES game in my opinion. It’s getting up there towards classic PES, for me. If I was in the business of handing out review-style scores now, I’d settle for 9/10. Easily. It’s hideously flawed in some areas, as a quick glance at any PES forum will soon tell you, but it’s still great. In that respect, it’s no different from the classic PES games that we look back upon with the marvellous rose-tinted spectacles of hindsight… Every past PES game has had annoying, embarrassing flaws. Remember PES5’s auto-stepover that would concede throw-ins? For just one example.

I think what’s changed in the PES community is a decreased tolerance for the flaws. PES2008 gave us a taste for critiquing PES, and it’s been open season ever since. FIFA08 was a serious football game and provided PES with a worthy competitor for the first time. The full story has yet to be written—the end of this console generation and the beginning of the next, whenever that may be, will provide a useful juncture to examine what’s happened to PES (and to PES fans) in this generation in more detail. But, for now, we’re living through this difficult period, and thus we can’t quite see it properly yet.

Setting aside all pretentious would-be theorising, the fact is that I am playing PES2010. I am enjoying Master League more deeply than I’ve enjoyed any other since PES5. I’m happy to go on playing it indefinitely. Season 12, let’s get started…

I have reverted to my stripey home kit of two seasons ago, with a slight difference. Instead of sky blue and white stripes, I’ve gone for two shades of blue. This home kit is now the permanent template for every season. Only minor colour changes will take place for the foreseeable future. My away kits will still change every season. The new away kit has been changed since the picture was taken. Those white shorts simply weren’t working out. I’ve changed them to black. Sorry about that, white shorts fans.

On the cashflow front I was £30m in credit at the start of the transfer window. I raised all my staff levels up to level 5. I spent £5m on skill cards. I stayed out of the transfer market after looking around but not really finding anyone I was keen enough to go after. Mathieu is currently 36 years old and about to retire at Valencia. I’ll watch out for his Regen next season.

I trimmed my squad by a few players. I sold Minanda, Voavy, and Espimas, who all brought in £5.5m combined—so that was the skill cards paid for. This is my first major splurge on skill cards. I bought a few for a couple of players last season but saw no major differences on the pitch. Sazi, if anything, has declined in ability. Or is that just my perception now that other, better players have slotted in around him?

Needless to say, I came into season 12 hoping to win the Treble. But it’s gone straightaway. I’ve been eliminated from the D1 Cup in the 1st round. That’s the Treble gone for another season—already out of reach. Damn! How could I have been so careless? Next season, season 13, I really will have to be more careful. All I can say in my defence is that Manchester City (them again) were pretty formidable in the first leg. Although I tried my best in the second leg, it wasn’t to be.

I lost my opening league match, at home, against a surprisingly tough Rangers FC—newly-promoted and obviously fired up at the sight of my hooped shirts. They beat me 0-2. One of their goals was that most infuriating of PES types: the one where the ball runs loose in a crowded penalty box and your players won’t do anything, won’t respond to any button presses, for just long enough to let an AI player pinch the ball and score.

A 4-1 win at home in my next match steadied the ship. I’m doing very well in the league, and suddenly scoring lots of goals. 23 goals in 11 matches is the joint-second-highest in the league, behind only a scarily resurgent Tottenham.

The key to my scoring spree is Munitis (pictured left). He’s scored 11 of my 23 goals and is top of the top scorers’ list. He might look as if he should be playing the banjo in a trailer park, but on the pitch he’s shaping up to be my most important left-footed striker since Hristo Stoichkov on PES3 (a fond memory indeed).

Perhaps the greatest thing about Munitis is that none of his goals seem to be anything special. They’re all ‘right place, right time’ finishes from 8 yards, or headers from corners that scramble over the line somehow. This is exactly what I need.

Below is a short clip showing two goals from this opening part of this season. First is a poacher’s side-footed finish from Munitis, following some sharp build-up play. Second is a traditional long-distance screamer from Sazi, which is uncannily like one of my old FIFA09 distance goals—fired into the opposite corner whilst running diagonally:

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In Europe I’m in a fairly weak group (on paper). I’ve won my opening two fixtures against Nancy Lorraine (what a gal) and Atalanta. Basel 1893 look as if they’ll offer my main competition in the group, and they’re up next.

All in all, I’m very happy with my PES life at the moment. Fumbling the Treble (yet again) right at the start of this season is only a minor blow. The bigger picture is one of intense involvement and enjoyment in Master League. Just the way it should be, really.