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.

Every now and then in PES, you have a ‘perfect game’.

I have always struggled to play against Holland in ISS and PES games. Their status in the games reflects their real-life status among the world’s leading football nations. The likes of Italy, Argentina, and Brazil enjoy similar exalted PES profiles, but I rarely have the same trouble with them as I do with Holland. They’re my international bogey team.

I played my usual 4-3-3. I left Owen in the starting line-up, and out on the wing. After seeing Rooney’s real-life chest and volley against Russia on Wednesday, I remembered that his real strength is directly in front of goal, not out on the wings. The only change I made to the team otherwise was to drop Beckham for Lampard. Sorry, Becks. Time moves on.

Straight from the kickoff I stormed forward with Rooney and Joe Cole, one-twoing my way through the right side of the Dutch defence. On Top Player difficulty this is where I usually simply run into a couple of defenders who hustle me off the ball. Not so this time. I played a lofted through ball to Rooney on the outer edge of the box… I thought about going for the first-time volley. Was art about to imitate life? But I thought better of it, took a touch to steady myself - and lashed the ball past Van der Sar. 1-0 within the first minute.

Just before half-time, after surviving about half a dozen seriously close efforts on my goal, I had a breakaway. Owen clean through on the left. I love it when I get a breakaway on PES, especially after several minutes of CPU pressure. I streaked towards the box with Owen, two Dutch defenders sprinting after me - and gaining. Yeah, right. Van der Sar advanced. I was still further out than I would have liked, but experience has taught me that if you don’t get your shot away early, the game will punish you. So I shot. The ball zipped neatly into the top corner of the net. 2-0.

I made it 3-0 early in the second half. It was nothing like as satisfying as the first two goals. It was a deflected John Terry header from a corner - an own goal, really, but the game can’t tell sometimes. (What was John Terry even doing up there in the box? PES is so random sometimes.)

With such a comfortable lead I didn’t have to worry about defending. The natural result of not worrying about doing something is that you do that thing much better. The game ended 3-0 to me.

I also won my final group match against Turkey and finished top of the group. My first knockout game is against… Russia. Boo.

Back to my International Cup efforts on PES6 today. After my taster of the next-gen PES it’s hard to take the cartoony-looking PES6 seriously. It’s tempting to just go through the motions and let the game more or less play itself while I think about how I’ll be feeling this time next week when I should (GAME’s excellent preorder service willing) be sitting down to fire up the full PES2008 on my PS3.

You have to concentrate when you’re playing PES. Granted, when you’re playing on the lower difficulty settings you can get away with thinking about something else. But on Top Player, where every PES player finds his rightful home eventually (how long does it take you to ’settle’ there every year? Minutes, hours, days? Weeks?), it’s no good playing the game with half or even three-quarters of your attention.

Focusing fully, I beat Germany 1-0 in the group opener. After humming and hawing for a while, I had replaced Owen with Crouch in the starting lineup. I moved Rooney out to the left wing, and placed Crouch where he belongs - right in front of the opponent’s keeper. I don’t rate Crouch at all in real life, but I quite like Crouch in PES6 in the same way that I quite liked Heskey in PES4. Big and lumbering, yes, but they have a way of making things happen.

I got my reward halfway through the first half. Ball out wide to Rooney - he can be one of the best wingers in the game, as it’s tough for him to be shaken off the ball - and a run down to the corner flag. Checked back onto his right foot and sent over a double-tap cross… Crouch was on the edge of the box. I had no other players nearby. For such a tall player (with his celebrated ‘good touch for a big man’), Crouch is pretty useless in the air. What he often does in real life, and in PES6, is to perform acrobatic scissor-kicks with those Daddy-long-legs of his.

He did so now. Executed a perfect scissors kick, his long limbs somehow gracefully coordinating themselves in the air, and sent the ball past Kahn into the roof of the net.

Unlike in my disaster against Argentina a few days ago, I defended well and played the rest of the game out quite comfortably. I’m now joint-top of the group with Turkey. The other team in the group is Holland. That’s my next fixture.

I really am playing these games one at a time, every day, by the way. I work full time. As the new PES approaches I’m less and less motivated to play the current one. Especially after playing the PES2008 demo. Come this time next week I’ll be playing many, many games per day, so this is the calm before the storm…