Congrats on your ML campaign.. ! Impressive considering you are using mostly defaults, iirc.
Thanks, though I think I gave myself too many moderately strong players at the start, and I think next time I create a custom team I will just go with the defaults. Some of the players I gave myself at the start have turned into real stars for me, though I didn't make many of them part of the starting eleven early on, favouring the likes of Ximilez and Espimas for too long out of sentiment. That 2010 season though, where I was doing fantastically at halfway, went a bit iffy afterwards. Due to my strong start I still won the title and scored loads of goals, but after that point when I last reported I was very inconsistent and got knocked out of the Champions League. Minanda only scored one more goal after the 16th game (30 games a season), but he still finished on a personal best of 13 goals in a season- my top scorer that season!
Two seasons later and I won the D1 cup for the first time in 3 or 4 years, will probably secure the league with 2 games left- Rangers have stayed quite close despite me only recently losing my second match of the season, and I am in the final of the Champions Cup! I face Milan, the team that has won the Italian D1 in all the previous seven seasons, and which did the treble last year (D1 league, D1 cup, Champions Cup). I will have to be on good form to beat them. A lot of my squad is very old, but they have developed really well over the years. My winger who I bought from Benfica has become extremely quick and has improved all his attacking skills greatly, and makes it rather easy to get beyond opposing full backs. Midfielders with powerful shots, Minanda slowing down in every respect but yet still becoming more accurate and skilful at 41, my team is at its strongest ever!
This year one of my top league scorers has been Palteza, an overpowered Argentine CB who I found years ago. He has penalty taking as one of his many special abilities, and this year I decided to let him take over from Minanda, who missed a lot last season (keepers drive me nuts with guessing the right way and doing super saves). The Argentine often scores due to his obscenely powerful shots; even if not perfectly placed and the keeper gets a hand to it, it can go in.
I should work out how to upload my saved goals/misses some time, I have some nice ones, including amusingly odd goals. I scored a beauty in the first match of last season (2011) with Huylens. I had played abysmally, was in a poor mood and felt like quitting. I was only losing 1-0 though, and a late hit-and-hope from the Dutchman (40, and retiring at the end of that season) levelled it. It must have been 25 or 30 yards, and it drilled low into the corner. It was nice for him to get a scorcher in his last year, and the lucky draw took the edge off my bad mood. In a similar vein of oldies doing well, I just won the D1 cup in 2012 with a single goal, a late bullet header from Castolo, who is now 37. He hasn't announced his retirement this year, but I expect it must be soon. My star forwad, Barcao, is 35, and though I have some good young players none are quite like him in their skill set. He has always had moderately good pace of ~80, same for shooting stats, but has brilliant dribbling accuracy, good heading/jumping and his special abilities are dribbling, 1-touch pass and outside (curling ball with outside of foot), all of which I value.
Other oldies in the squad; Tedesco 36, Minanda 41, Balestri 37, Valeny 38 (only one of this list who is on bench), and Zenga in goal is 37- he sometimes is extremely fatigued at the end of a game, to the extent that I felt obliged to sub him once! It would be nice to have a lot of them retire in a way, to pose a new challenge of rebuilding the squad and to see the goal and assist stats. There is no way that I know of to see their total career stats in PES 5.