Fellow retro PES players, let's address one key issue that affects our community. Retro PES should also embrace, when possible, the online multiplayer part. I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, but it's vital to preserve the legacy, for example, of PES 4, 5 and 6 so that those titles will stay popular. I myself would like to see me, in 20 years, still playing on some server or group online with real humans. Like in golden times... I remember playing PES 2008 ps2 online avidly back then. Those titles still have a lot to say and can compete with newer games which will never match the immediate joy of really controlling your players. But there are some things I would like to point out.
1) First thing first, online is best enjoyed when distances aren't huge. Playing from France with a Chinese player it's very critical, since ping will ve high. So regional groups should be encouraged as in old times (the server ensured you to get a good match to play). For this we would need either to have many people on a server with auto match feature and/or regional discord groups and websites.
2) PES6 gets all the love of the online community, while PES5 or WE9 and PES4/WE8 are way way behind. Yes, PES4 online support (I have one European discord group for it) is very basic and needs external tools such as Hamachi or RadminVPN... but PES5 has a couple of active servers: Indie and a WE9LE server which works well also for PES5. Why then, despite the huge hype PES5 has, those servers are mostly void unlike PES6 Stars that has tens if not hundreds of players active at all times?
3) Some very popular retro PES YouTubers. I'll say it right away: some of you, guys, are very selfish to say the least. We understand that you prioritize creation of fantastic content. And we understand you want to grow your channels and view and like count. But why discouraging comments to try to gather people to play those titles you display on YouTube? Why you delete invites to play? Does the online undermine your work? Don't you think that someone would be grateful to find under your videos some link to groups of lovers of retro PES who play online? I would not have been able to gather a small group for PES4 if I had not had the support of footballerPOMAH. Some other YouTubers, however, are even disrupting our efforts to make PES4 and 5 great again... online.
PES5, in particular, since it has server support and an excellent one too (Indie) does not deserve to be forgotten and to be only played online sparingly by a handful of nicknames. We should do more in order to gather people who would dream to be able to play PES5/WE9 online.