Pro Evolution Soccer & the Fires of the Master League

For nine months every year, the glut of successive fixtures that embody the modern european football calendar unequivocally decide the strongest teams in the land. Across the continent, prospective champions jockey and joust for their countries honours, whilst overlying rivalries and the fight to avoid relegation to the lower tiers fuels an unrelenting scramble for victories. This is the blueprint for domesticated league football across much of the globe, and although its rigidity may imply repetitiveness, the landscape of the sport demands that even the mightiest of teams will fall, and even the smallest of teams can achieve far beyond their means.

But as many of the continental league seasons begin to gradually draw to a close, their individual victors having all been deservedly crowned, there exists one more match to play out, and one last story to be told. This is the UEFA Champions League final, the pinnacle of world club football, and the driving force behind many of the greatest players to have ever graced the game. And, rather aptly, this is also the centrepiece that resides at the heart of the Pro Evolution Soccer Master League spectrum.

Football is the sport of the romantic. Beyond the countless ninety minute skirmishes exists an anthology of rich histories and fallen legacies, and of careers both anonymous and revered. Some players go their life without ever having performed on the grandest stage, with others coming tantalisingly close to achieving success, only to have it snatched away from them at the last. And yet for all of the romanticism, for all of the tragedy and the glory, the European Cup encompasses every narrative from the absurdly ridiculous to the wholly expected, offering a chance at greatness for those willing to run a gauntlet of almost inevitable failure. For it’s only the very best that become winners of the Champions League, and it’s only the winners that are able to lay claim to the immortality that it offers.

The Pro Evolution Soccer Master League takes this raw quest for reverence and allows you full control over your own destiny. There are no objectives in the Master League other than the ones that you set for yourself, but it’s this inherent desire to lead your team, be it the mighty Slovan Bratislava or the youthful Athletic Bilbao, to the absolute precipice of greatness that serves as the catalyst for your journey. Of course, if you want to truly fulfil the criteria of the being the undisputed underdog, then you can always do it with a team of your own divine creation.

If neither Bayern Munich, Manchester United or even the wonderfully named West Midlands Village aren’t to your liking, then the game also comes with many tailor-made fictional teams that you can cast your own impression on. Take the PEU League for example, home to the renowned talents of Blookrows FC and the inimitable Xakoulagos. These are teams with shoddy looking kits, relatively poor players and with next to no hope of playing alongside the worlds elite in the Champions League anytime soon. A perfect choice for an underdog, then. Using Edit Mode, you can alter the teams attire, their name and even the colour of the goal nets in their home stadium. But this is your team now, and their history, their future, will be entirely characterised by your intervention.

One of the most well-known features of the classic Master League experience is the option of substituting your teams players, be they real or not, for a crop of generic Pro Evolution stalwarts. In the past, Konami has given birth to such icons as Castolo, the lethal goal-poacher, Valeny, the lumbering centre-half and Espimas, the tricky winger. These cult icons are just as ingrained to the history of Pro Evolution Soccer as its intrepid Edit Mode, and serve as a reminder to just how much that the Master League has evolved with the times. Today, those aforementioned fictional stars have given way to a new generation, with players like Jacomorac, Stramberg and Minandinho taking up the mantle in their wake. And even though the players themselves have changed, the unspoken challenge remains the same; lead them to glory, or die trying.

It’s here where your Master League journey begins, a journey that will undoubtedly be peppered with as much optimism and enthusiasm as it will be disappointment and regret. Your first task will be to simply win a few games. If you’ve set up in the English League, then you’ll know the drill; points taken from the likes of Arsenal and Chelsea are a bonus, whilst points taken from Burnley or Sunderland are a necessity. One of the biggest achievements of the Master League is that, as you and your team continually clamber for points, the scape of the league is forever changing both with and without your input. Young players improve, older players retire, new players burst on to the scene through your youth academy. Domestic cups are decided, relegation is finalised and even individual honours are handed out. What may have been an introductory season far below your own lofty expectations could take on a whole new significance once you see that your striker has won the league MVP award, or that your goalkeeper was included in the team of the season. The Master League is constantly ticking over, a living, breathing being that is forever calculating, collating and delicately rewarding the deserving. But, for as appreciable as a post-season financial windfall or an increase in club ranking may be, beyond the mammoth achievement of inclusion in the European Cup, there may be no greater reward than seeing an improvement of the players under your wing.

If you’re ever going to make it to the Champions League, then you’ll need to have a team of brimming with talent. And although the enthusiasm of Gellazca, Myrheim and Vratokov is never in doubt, their development as a player may very well be. As Master League takes the very essence of the modern football spectrum and boils it down to its purest form, player development is expectedly simplistic, yet delightfully rewarding. The more you use your players, the higher chance they will have of making a breakthrough, and lucky for you, if your team of PES originals has anything going for them, it’s their youthful exuberance. Providing your players are still at an age where they can improve, utilising them in matches offers a great chance that they will reach a milestone in their career, which they will either fail to overcome or surpass with ease. For the players who successfully reach that next level, things tend to become a whole lot simpler. Strikers find the target more often, goalkeepers have a little more positional sense and defenders become a little more adept at staving off opposition wingers. For those who don’t make it though and fail to progress at the same level as their peers, then a cut-price transfer may be your best course of action, such is the state of footballs unforgiving nature.

But this will have all been worth it just to have reached the promised land that is the UEFA Champions League. If the collective development of your team was quick, then your wait for inclusion within club footballs theatre of the gods may be short. But if you’ve struggled domestically, faltered on the big occasion and assembled a team built upon the fragility of the dreaded transfer release clause, then you may be made to wait that little be longer.

And yet, from the first time that you hear that oh-so recognisable music, things tend to become clearer than they have ever been. Up until now, you have slaved over your transfer budget, seen youth prospects rise from obscurity and slowly but surely edged your way up the league table. Once, you were a team with few aspirations, an awful strip and a club ranking closer to that of Arsenal de Sarandi than Arsenal FC. Now though, you’re a part of the Champions League crop, and from here, it’s only five-star accommodation and champagne at noon. To see the Master League menus light up into that distinct shade of blue and pearlescent silver, to hear the hymn of the Champions League ring proudly in the background, and to see the official insignia of the competition sewn into the shoulder of a kit that you made is a more than fitting reward for all of your strife.

Pro Evolution Soccer is and may always will be a game that struggles to fight against the licensing monopoly accrued by its rivals, but what it does have is the UEFA Champions League, and what it has it absolutely makes the best of. I’ve been playing Pro Evolution Soccer since its ISS days, and even then there was a certain unmistakable sense of anticipation as two teams of jagged polygonal figures stood shoulder to shoulder in the minutes before kick off. Now, that same unfettered level of anticipation runs rampant throughout modern Master League in the form of your journey to achieve the recognition of footballs elite, a journey that wondrously encapsulates the poetic beauty of the worlds most popular sport.

Both Pro Evolution Soccer and its accompanying Master League mode may both be far from perfect, but in terms of distilling the spirit of the game into something of an accessible, enjoyable and perpetually changing experience, the Master League represents the absolute peak of the football video game career mode.