PES Chronicles

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?

Link:

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.

Season 13 of my Master League career. And, hey, look at that: it’s March 1st, 2010. It’s nearly springtime. I’m playing a PES game with a fervour unmatched since the halcyon days of PES5. I still can’t believe it. I consider myself fortunate indeed.

It’s a great football game year, especially with FIFA10 waiting on the sidelines for if/when PES2010 fades. Even if PES2010 doesn’t fade, I might soon take a few days off to play the ‘other game’. This is something I’ve thought about doing a lot recently, as the ML seasons pass. FIFA10 is too good a game, IMO, to allow it to sit for long.

But I probably won’t play FIFA10, even for just a day. Not yet. The time’s not right. I’ve got too much to lose. I don’t want to break Master League’s magic spell. I’m loving PES2010 right now, but how would I feel after experiencing FIFA10’s smooth animations and passing once again?

I will see how I feel at the end of this Master League season. A Treble would provide the perfect opportunity for a natural break. Maybe this season 13 will be the season?

NO. It’s not the season. Once again, I am out of the Division 1 Cup at the first time of asking. I have been defeated in the first round for the second season in a  row. How can I have been so careless?

My opponents were Man Utd. In the first leg at my place I went 0-1 down early on, but fought my way back to a 2-1 win. I felt relieved to have the aggregate lead going into the second leg. I fancied my chances, to be honest. Complacent? Possibly.

That second leg (box score on the right) was an unbelievably tough game. It was also a very fishy game. What I feared more than anything was conceding an early goal, because I knew that was the AI’s perfect scenario: it’d be ahead on the away goal and I’d have to batter at their goal to get anything. They did score early on, and I did batter their goal. But I got nothing. 1-0 it ended, 2-2 on aggregate, and I was out. 62% possession. 18 shots on goal. Out.

Maybe next season, hey? Yes. Maybe next season I’ll win the Treble…

In general news: guess which Regen Default player turned up in my Youth team? None other than The Myth of Castolo. His first Regen appearance was just a few seasons ago. I ignored him back then (I really don’t like Castolo) and he vanished, and that, I understood, was that: goodbye to Castolo, forever. I even wrote at the time, a touch gleefully:

“I won’t see Castolo again until PES2011. That’s fine by me. In fact I almost wish he would reappear, so I could once again have the pleasure of ignoring him.”

Is the game jogging my elbow, saying, “Oh, go on. Please…”?

Okay. I’ll bite. This time, I feel I’ve got time and space for Castolo. I have signed him up and he is part of my squad and part of my plans. I would like to nurse him up to true greatness, or at the very least to being a decent player.

So let Project Castolo commence! He’s particularly rubbish at the moment. I’ll be bringing him on as a sub in safe games, and maybe playing him from the start in any meaningless games that happen along. If he’s not at least a 70 OVR by the time he’s 22, I’ll sell him, and then that really will be the final curtain for me and Castolo.

Here’s my new squad. As well as Castolo I’ve signed Jamie Carragher, aged 18. He cost me £2.5m from his current club. I forget who that was now. Valencia? Dortmund? Isn’t Master League wonderful?

I didn’t buy anyone else. I tried my best for about 5 or 6 players rated above 90. Regen Scholes again—I’m a big Paul Scholes fan in PES as well as the real world. In my ML he’s now 22 and if he doesn’t come to me soon, I’ll stop trying.

I also tried for Pirlo, currently a talented 19-year-old at Inter, and also for Forlan, currently a similarly talented youngster elsewhere. No luck. What will it take to bring truly great players to my team? I really, really need to start winning some cups to go with my leagues…

New home and away kits. Away (right), it’s my first flirtation with a green kit in PES2010, after bad experiences in past PESes where I’ve been unable to see my players properly.

For the home kit (left) I altered the stripes’ colouring to a traditional sky blue and white, and went for white shorts instead of black. I love playing Barbie at the start of every season. Love it. Next season, I fancy going for something a bit different for both kits.

I’m doing well in the league. There’s been a traditional unexpected defeat that I felt helpless to prevent (but probably just defended badly and failed to concentrate properly, in truth). There’s also been a few puzzling, frustrating, 0-0 draws. All intermingled with satisfying, fully rounded matches. This game still does not feel easy to me.

There’s a familiar look to my qualifying group in the Champions League: Juventus, Aberdeen, and Rosenborg. I’ve played Juve and Rosenborg so far and beaten them both 1-0. I’m not going to have any trouble qualifying. But then it’s never the group stages that trouble me in this competition…

Here I go with season 5 in my Master League career on PES2010(PS3). Where I’m still in Division 2.

I must be one of a very, very few people who are still struggling with the game this year. Perhaps I’m even the very worst player. I don’t know. What I do know is that I don’t really play PES with reference to how good/bad I am compared to other people. It’s a self-contained world. The only external reference points, for me, are how I did in other, previous Master Leagues. So when I talk about my awareness of other people finding the game easy, it’s just that: it’s just talk. It doesn’t weigh me down when I pick up the joypad. I think everyone who plays and loves Master League is much the same way.

I was in a lot of debt. Master League has always modelled debt, but in previous games it was fairly simple to get out of it and avoid the dreaded GAME OVER. Here in PES2010, being in debt doesn’t cause GAME OVER. It’s worse than that: it brings about the downgrading of critical, hard-earned staff improvements. If that measure doesn’t clear the debt, your players are in danger of being sold from under you.

It’s very easy to get into debt in PES2010. I had £900,000 in the bank and my combined bills for the year totalled £7,100,000. The financial outlay occurs at the end of August. I needed to find £6,200,000 from somewhere. Where? I didn’t have any valuable players to sell. I didn’t really have that many players, full stop. What was I going to do?

I thought I might as well accept a few staff degrades. I experimentally lowered a few of them from level 3 to level 2, and even to level 1 (Youth team), and seeing what that did to my Expected Earnings. I also sold a few players for a LOT more than they were worth. A £100k player went for £1m.

I went through my squad, selling players off. One after the other I thought “Do I have to…” It seemed I did have to. I sold Pelaez. I sold Gutierrez. I sold Lagos. I sold Kuktayan. Survival was at stake. It had to be done. I sold Mansaly. I sold Shimizu (good riddance). I sold Sardeaut, a good defender whom I knew I was going to miss badly… Most of those players weren’t even on the transfer list. The AI teams in PES2010’s Master League aren’t shy about making offers for your players. It’s a refreshing change from previous years.

I sold as many players as I needed to sell to get the debt down. Finally, by the penultimate week of the transfer window, one week shy of Budget Day, I had the debt down to £32,000. This was with most of my hard-earned staff upgrades removed.

And then it came. A Golden Offer landed in my in-box. I had a CB named Moreno. He was decent but nothing special, a journeyman I’d picked up from the Free Agents list a season or two back. His value was £367,000. The CPU offer for him? Oh, that was £14,815,500. Damn near FIFTEEN MILLION pounds.

I accepted the offer. Of course I did.

Right. That was my staff upgrades totally saved—and I could even afford a few more staff upgrades. And I wouldn’t have to sell any more players. I’d already sold enough—too many. This close to the end of the transfer window, there was no time to bring in any new players from the regular transfer market. Instead I scooped up some Youth team players—a defender (PARTALON), a midfielder (MCCANN), and a striker (A GHANI)—to partly cover the holes in my squad. I did have one ‘proper’ transfer queued up, a delayed negotiation just waiting for my agreement (that would never have come without the Golden Offer saving the day). It was for a striker, NEMETH, who I thought I’d never be able to afford. I could now.

At the end of it all—after all the joyous, unrestrained spending—I had £2,000,000 left. That was enough for even more staff upgrades, but no. I’ve learned my lesson. I decided to hold onto that money. It would come in useful in mid-season and at the start of next season. I can’t rely on getting Golden Offers every time I need them.

And so I started the season. Once again I pondered knocking the difficulty down to Professional level. My not-inconsiderable PES pride would have been able to take it. After 5 seasons in the doldrums, I can accept that I’m not yet a top player of this game. But I left the difficulty on Top Player in the end, for now. I’ll see how the season unfolds. If it’s looking like another wash-out by mid-season, I’ll definitely drop down a level.

I played the first three matches. I won the first, lost the second, drew the third. As before when I’ve had to cope with a shoestring squad, I’m coping pretty well. Having no spare players really focuses the mind and aids concentration.

One odd thing: I’m in the Cup, which I didn’t think was possible after only finishing 12th last season. I thought you had to finish in the top 10 to qualify? Regardless, my first round opponents will be Panathinaikos. That game’s next. And the whole first half of the season is next, in Monday’s post.

Here I am at the start of my fourth consecutive season in Division 2 in my PES2010 Master League career. It’s tempting to indulge in a spot of self-flagellating breast-beating. Why has this happened? How has this happened? Today, though, I want to focus on what I’m trying to do about it.

First things first: clearing the club’s debt. There’s a whole new dimension to the financial side of Master League in PES2010. Going into debt no longer incurs a simple GAME OVER, as in the past. (You knew where you were with GAME OVER; those were the days, man.) Now, going into debt—depending on the amount—can see your best players sold from under you, and/or many of your critical staff upgrades abruptly withdrawn.

Thankfully the game seems to know when you’re in the direst trouble, and offers you a lifeline or two. “Okay,” says the game to you, “I can see what a mess you’ve made of things. Soon you’ll wake up to find your three best players sold, and maybe your head coach stripped of all noticeable ability. Then you really will be in trouble. But hang on: here’s a transfer offer from, oh, Spartak Dublin or whatever they’re called (aren’t I whimsical!), offering to buy one of your players for a preposterous fee that covers your debt and then some. Don’t pout at me like that. You can be an Iron Man here if you like—you can always decline the offer, and take the consequences like a man. Or you can accept the offer and live to fight another day with nothing worse having happened than losing that one player. It’s up to you.” And the game saunters away, hands in pockets, whistling nonchalantly…

That has happened before for me already in PES2010: the life-saving transfer offer that arrives in the nick of time. And it happened again. Oscar, my talented midfielder, a player I’ve had since he was a youth, and who I hoped to see flourish and attain legendary status in my team—Oscar was the player that the CPU came in for with the ‘Golden Offer’. The offer was for £2,800,000. His actual value was around £200,000. It was the last-but-one week of the transfer window. I was facing financial ruin. I had to sell him. I sold him.

Shake the dust from your feet, and move on.

The cash paid all of my debts and then some. Here’s my full squad for the season.

Thats not my First XI up there, by the way. I’ll post my First XI next time.

I haven’t got enough defenders. I know. What am I still doing with Lothar and Ivarov? I know. Just why are Burchet and Stremer still hanging around? I know. Shimizu, that celebrated/notorious midget,  has come up from the Youth team. I know: with his high wages? At least the player ‘not-Greg’ is coming along nicely and starting to have more of an influence. It’s a long time now since I designed him, but I recall designing him not to be a young superstar. He’ll peak late on. It’ll be interesting in future seasons if I’m in financial trouble again and I get a ‘Golden Offer’ for him.

There’s no one else really worth picking out to talk about at this stage. Here in Division 2 (aaargh!) I’ve yet to break through the early-seasons period of ML where all the players are fairly average and there’s nothing to differentiate them much from each other. I’ll know I’ve arrived in PES2010—really and truly—when I get a player I want to hang onto regardless of how much debt I’m in or how many millions of £££s the CPU teams want to offer.

I considered various changes for season 4. Top of my list of possible fixes: my formation. Should I get rid of my faithful 4-3-3? Revert to a 4-4-2, or even a 4-5-1?

4-3-3 worked brilliantly for me in every PES until now—but PES2010 is different. For now, as can be seen above at the top of my squad list, I’ve settled for moving my front 3 closer together. The wide men’s new positions make for a tighter-knit cluster in the centre and it has the flexibility to allow ad hoc changes between AMF/WF/SS/CF. This new look to the frontline worked out pretty well in the first 10 matches of the season (see below).

I also considered dropping the difficulty from Top Player to Professional. This was a big, big decision, and I didn’t do it in the end. I’m still playing on Top Player—for now. I’m not a PES macho man who absolutely must play on Top Player at all times, but I felt that having put so much into these past few seasons on Top Player it’d be a shame to dilute any future achievement of promotion by playing on Professional for a season, or even just part of a season.

I decided not to alter my team kits. I’ll play in the Croatia-style checkered home strip and the mostly black away strip (right) for a second season. This is unusual for me. I usually change kits every season without fail. But somehow I don’t think I deserve a kit-change this season.

And so to where it all really counts—out on the pitch, playing the actual games. I started very, very cautiously, really focusing on shutting out the opposition. I won my opening game but lost the next two, drew the next, and lost the next. An inauspicious start, and I went out of the Cup at the hands of Manchester City. They played frighteningly well in both legs. The aggregate score was 0-5. It’s probaby for the best that I’m not in Division 1 just yet.

Ah but then I went on a great unbeaten mini-run, just winning and drawing. After 10 matches I’m in a very healthy 4th position in the table:

But look at that goals-scored column: 6. It’s not good enough. I need to pull my finger out and get up to speed with PES2010. I feel that I’m being left behind here. And look at the mixture of teams in the division now. By the time I get up into my ersatz Premier League, there might not be many English teams left there.

But as I’ve said before, I love it really. My enjoyment factor for Master League 2010 is off the scale. I haven’t had a tough time like this, ever. Not even in the benchmark for a great Master League, PES5. The struggle just to start getting anywhere in Master League 2010 is the story of my PES year so far, and the struggle is not over yet, not by a very long way.