I've already played half of the 1st season on my all-Defaults ML save in PES5.
I'll expand a bit on my adventure.
So I bought the 6-stars difficulty as well as the ML Composition feature, and used both on this save in order to create a footballing world comprised of the Premier League, a league comprised of the best French/German/Dutch teams, the Serie A+La Liga (what a superleague) and, as
@geeeeee would call it, The Best of the Rest with all of the non-league sides of PES5, from Lisbonera to Caopolo, AC Czech to Bruxelles. The latter is ML United's tier.
ML United's roster is one of my most cherished of all-time, and also a squad in a transitional phase. The legendary early 00's squad is being dismantled as the likes of Celnili, Barota, Vornander and Dulic have recently retired, plus the Iougas, Minandas and Castolos are on their way out - but still are good enough to be considered important elements here. The fresh faces of Jaric, Dodo, Stein, Ordaz and Hamsun give all of the 132 ML United fans scattered around the world some hope for the future. They'd better be the real deal, for in this challenge I can't buy or sell players, and can only acquire a Default regen or future Default when one of mine retires.
The formation: usually I go with the 3-5-2 which is definitely the better fit for these players. Having used it a lot on my PES08 PS2 ML Defaults adventure, this time I wanted something different. I set up a kind of asymmetrical 4-4-2 diamond:
Ivarov; Espimas, Libermann, Jaric, Ruskin; Stein, Dodo, Ximelez, Minanda; Castolo, Ordaz.
Stein is the central DMF. Dodo plays on the "Gattuso role" as a right-side DMF, occasionally going forward but mostly preoccupied with helping Stein on the central midfield. Ximelez is the LMF but has a tendency to go inside often, whereas the King Minanda of course plays in his preferred AMF role as ML United's maestro.
Fitting Espimas on this system was the main problem. He's technically not a RB but his skillset suggests he could be decent there, so I went with it.
And how does the team look? Over the years, for some reason, I've developed a tendency to wear the defaults in black/yellow kits. It's now a kind of tradition.
I still haven't designed an emblem, am out of ideas.
Here's the home kit:
The Black symbolizes our despair in trying to play some proper football and always failing at it; the Yellow represents our piss-poor performances over the years.
Typically, I don't put any sponsors on the Defaults' kits (well, no sponsor wants anything to do with us anyway...) yet this time I opted to. I wanted to write "Retro-PES Corner" but it just didn't fit, so I went with
Kampfgeist, a fake "Konamized" sponsor from circa-PES2011. "Kampfgeist" apparently means "fighting spirit": a perfect fit for the Defaults, right? We may play horribly but we give it all out there.
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I thought this was going to be a painful ride from the start. How wrong I was.
I've never seen the Defaults play like this. They've been brilliant. We might get promoted on the first season, it's unbelievable. We're still also on the D2 Cup after eliminating Djurgardens (1-0, 0-0) with our reserves - I decided to use the D2 to rest all of the first-teamers; probably am going to keep on using this "system". I've already gotten enough PES Pts to pay this season's salaries as well.
The Stamina system in PES5 is ruthless as we all know it so Minanda, Castolo and Ximelez barely last more than 60 minutes on the pitch. Often I sub off Minanda for Macco, playing the latter as LMF while Ximelez takes the AMF role; then Hamsun/Huylens for Castolo and, if we're holding on to a lead, then Valeny comes in as LB, Ruskin becomes a LMF while I eliminate the AMF position and put Macco as RMF, using a 4-4-2 flat; or I sub off one of the strikers and go for a 4-3-3 with 3 DMFs, subbing in Iouga. I barely ever use any other player except on the D2 Cup; so far this is working.
A little bonus:
20 fouls committed by the CPU on a 15-min game! (and only two shots as well...) PES5 in a nutshell.