PES 2021: 6 Ups & 3 Downs

3. New Master League Managers

Last year, PES introduced a collection of preset managers for players to use in the Master League, ranging from Argentinian legend and current Gimnasia de La Plata manager Diego Maradona to the late Johan Cruyff (the latter feeling like an odd choice, admittedly).

Regardless, this was a welcome addition to the Master League, one that arguably helped players to add an extra layer of narrative realism to their managerial experience, albeit at the expense of being able to create your own manager from scratch.

So for this year’s edition, Konami decided to add a few more in the form of Frank Lampard, Pep Guardiola and Ryan Giggs. In terms of managers that players would want to play as, this feels like a far more relevant trio to include; managing Chelsea as Lampard, City as Pep or Man Utd as Giggs certainly feels like an enticing prospect, and overall it’s definitely a plus.

One minor but definite annoyance, however, is that Pep’s character model looks more reminiscent of his early days managing Barcelona and you can’t help but feel that if Konami have used older face scans from previous legends/players for this - assuming that’s why Pep looks dated - then perhaps they could have also included a few others to go with it?

Maybe Arteta at Arsenal, Zidane at Real Madrid...

Pirlo at Juventus, anyone?