World Cup 2002 is the one I always want to play again on PES, unfortunately this patch does not run so smoothly on my laptop. There was just so much going on in the real WC that I wonder what a great tournament it could have been. I remember there was an extremely short break between CL final and the 1st WC game, many stars were injured or simply tired and played like bad copies of themselves. And then the referees....
With the time difference and because the pay TV almost had the exclusive rights here it was a must to watch a highlight show in free TV every night. Almost no live games were shown in free TV, and then at a time we had to stay in school. Turkey played Brazil one morning and the Turkish guys at school received SMS from their fathers with the goals, I remember the enthusiasm when they took the lead and the disappontment when their Nokia 3310 vibrated again with the short messages: "1-1" and "1-2". Strangest World Cup I can remember from that point of view. But it always has a special place in my heart for these little anecdotes.
As usual, before the WC we were all talking about who will be World Champion, most people said France or Argentina, Portugal was also a favorite, same as Italy. Some also said England after the humiliation of Germany in Munich. As far as I remember Brazil wasn't mentioned a lot, at least in my little circle of school friends. We were shocked to see all the favorites lose early while one of the weakest German sides ever won one game after the other thanks to the brillant performances of Oliver Kahn. Senegal came out of nowhere and after this WC didn't show up again for a long time.There were so many great players around at this time I always thought how amazing it could have been if they were all around in their best form and with good referees. Thanks to PES 6 and all these patches it is possible to rewrite history.
I played a lot of PES 2017 on PS4 again, I was pleasantly surprised with the high number of fouls compared to the newer games like 2020. This and the fact the season update 2021 won't include the famous stadium of Inter and AC Milan anymore makes it easy for me to say no to the new PES for the 1st time since 2015. In the end, sooner or later I always return to PES 5 and 6 anyway. I always like the Korean Patch for PES 6 with 2008-09 season, I worked a lot on the Option File and now have a long term save running, playing a Serie A season as all 20 teams. I don't know if I will ever finish it but at least 6 match days are played already. I might upload a highlight video with some goals soon. Also the Firebird patch of 2019-20 is great. What I liked the most however was the new Shollym patch with special OF for harder gameplay. I hope to also find patches for 20-21 season soon. Old PES games are simply the best, and I would like to thank all the people who keep it alive with these amazing works. It just never gets boring and is still challenging after so many years and so many matches played.
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I think this is the first time that I really really planned to advance with a strong team and I didn't succeed. But I drawed with England (1-1 with goals by Crespo and Scholes), so England had the same number of points (4) as Sweden, which had a better goal ratio. Nigeria beat both England and Argentina, (they lost to Sweden 0-4), so they had 6 points and got the first place in the group of death.
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