PES Chronicles

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.

One of my pre-season friendlies was against a team called Getafe. But how is that pronounced? And which syllable do you stress? Get-AFF? Get-AFF-ay? Gee-TAYF? Gee-TAY-fee? I say Get-AFF. It’s probably wrong.

Come to think of it, how do you say Barota? (I say Ba-ROTTER.) Nachdegall? (Nash-di-GAL.) Ceciu? (SESS-you.) Huylens? (HI-lunz.) There are dozens of such names sprinkled throughout the PESverse. Hey, I sense a special post coming up in the future.

Shimizu? (Shim-ITZ-oo.)

OK, I’ll save it all for that special post. Back to the game.

None of my new players look great. Their stats are on the low-average side, with a couple of exceptions (Recoba and Morfeo). Still, they’re all better than the Default players by a country mile (and then some). But I doubt that any of them will be taking on teams single-handedly next season as The Elch used to….

I’ll be taking special close-up looks at individual players’ stats in the future. It’s an area I’ve neglected in the past.

Here’s a curiosity. Take a look at these mugshots of two of my new players – Matuzalem (left), and Kmolo (right):

They could be brothers. Twin brothers. Kmolo has an extra bit of fringe, and he sports a goatee beard that makes him look as if he’s Matuzalem in a parallel, evil universe. Otherwise, they’re clearly the same player model. Only facially, though. Matuzalem is a midfield whippet. Kmolo is a tall, bulky, classic centre-forward in the Schwarz mould. They’re both among the best of my new crop of players. Both had to go into my First XI. Speaking of which…

I’ve been spelling Libermann wrong all this time. When putting together my First XI list just now, I noticed my mistake and corrected it. Oops.

Anyways, my full squad for season 2008 is thus -

I’ve achieved pretty much all of my House Rule goals at a stroke – the squad size is 25 players, there are at least 5 Default players still in the squad (in fact there are 10), and at least 1 Default player is in the starting line-up. There are no Elcherino-style super-players.

My First XI:

As ever, this First XI is hilariously provisional. It wasn’t even the team I sent out onto the pitch in my first pre-season game.

When I finished last season I was in such a hurry to get it over with and – as I thought – walk away from PES2008 for a long time (or forever), that I simply accepted the first pre-season selections the game presented me with. In this case the teams were Getafe CF and a World Selection.

Things started pretty well against Getafe.

I held them off with what felt like ease… You never can tell when you’re playing PES, or any football game, or sometimes any computer game full stop, whether you are really the one controlling matters or if the game has simply decided to let you do something at this present moment for its own narrative purposes. It’s a feeling I’ve always had to some extent over the last few versions of PES. I cannot shake it off in this particular year for some reason….

I was doing very well, and then I scored. Camacho got me the goal. What to say about this player? He’ll be the first player whose stats and abilities I’ll look at in-depth (next week sometime). Camacho is plainly going to be a star – and, now that I’ve implemented the House Rules, I’m worried about him. What if he becomes too much of a star and I have to move him on? This is why I was so reluctant to return to PES2008 with draconian House Rules.

I won a penalty – a rare enough event – but knew that Morfeo would miss it wherever I chose to hit it. And Morfeo did miss it. I merely flicked the analogue stick to the right and tapped shoot. All very gentle, but it was no good. The ball hit the post, but it rebounded to Camacho…

I love a finish like that – booted into an ‘impossible’ section of the net (the underside of the roof of the net!), and then the shooter falling down under the defender’s hefty challenge. (Would I have got another penalty if I hadn’t scored? Would I hell.)

Getafe stormed back. They mounted consistent pressure but couldn’t get through my defence. I really know how to defend now, if I may say so myself.

Finally they got a free-kick about 25 yards out… and scored. Of course they did. A minute later they got another free kick in almost the same place – and scored this one as well. It ended 2-1 to Getafe. I had to laugh.

My second and last pre-season game before the season started was against a World Selection that featured the likes of Adriano, Ronaldo, Ronaldo (both Ronaldos), and Owen. They thumped me 3-0. So much for my defending. I was kind of lucky to get nil. I barely had a kick of the ball. It might well be another long, hard season ahead.

I enjoyed playing with my new players. More, I enjoyed playing PES2008. After several days of playing FIFA08, it felt a lot like coming home again.

The core PES gameplay has never been bettered as an overall football game experience. Over an entire decade it has stood up. Sure, this year’s next-gen flavour is a little sickly-sweet for my tastes, but it’s still there. It’s still PES.