Please, please, please...

[sabocat]

Please... help me get better at defending. I've read/watched every tutorial I can find, I've spent over 600 hrs combined between PES2015/16, I've posted about it numerous times, and I'm still no better and defending than I was on day one.

Every tutorial I can find is about tactics: how to setup strategy, what the different options mean, etc. Or gameplay strategy tips, e.g., don't dive, don't ball-chase, protect the area in front of goal, etc.

But what I struggle with is the more basic stuff: how do I get my player to run over here? How do you cover a player? How do you intercept passes? If I position my player to intercept the ball, the game AI just has him ignore it. How to you win the ball back? What buttons do you push? What do the different buttons do? It seems like you just press A and hope the game does something good for you. You're supposed to press it at the "correct time", but again, how? I see an opening for a tackle, and press A and the game tackles later, when it feels like it, in whatever direction it feels like. How do you even reach the level of tactics when the game won't let you just run left?

Yes, I've done all the tutorials. In the tutorial, you press A and the AI wins the ball back for you. In the actual game, you press A and the game doesn't win the ball for you. What am I missing?

I know there must be more to it, but I can't figure it out and it's giving me fits. Thanks for any help.

 

[irwnhdi]

how do I get my player to run over here? How do you cover a player? How do you intercept passes? If I position my player to intercept the ball, the game AI just has him ignore it. How to you win the ball back? What buttons do you push?

Hey there =) I'm no expert in PES but I believe I have gone through the same phase you are describing now. As cliche as it may sound, practice really does wonders and I mean in all aspects; difficulty level, duration of a match, game speed, taking turns to play with a big team against a smaller team and vice versa. This way, I found out how certain teams play, where they usually attack, who are the key men.

For covering a player, what I can tell you from my experience is to set up man marking in your tactics before playing against the opposition. Depending on who I'm up against, I sometimes double team their striker (if they're playing with only 1 up front through the middle), their AM and wingers. Now, when defending in your own half, control 1 player and hold on to the pressure button. Let your other player come forward and press while you try to push the opponent to the side or back. Usually if the player you are controlling is blocking his passing/dribbling path, he will tend to pass it backwards to his teammate. When this happens, stay calm and repeat the same procedure until the opponent makes a mistake. You will see that he is struggling to get past you or pass his way out, sometimes he will go for a long ball to the front. This is when you double tap the tackle button (not the slide button) to get the ball off him.

What do the different buttons do? It seems like you just press A and hope the game does something good for you. You're supposed to press it at the "correct time", but again, how? I see an opening for a tackle, and press A and the game tackles later, when it feels like it, in whatever direction it feels like.

I'm unsure on which platform you're playing though, if the A button is your tackling/pressure button, my advise will be to not hold on to it until you are certain that you have a good chance of getting the ball back. How to be certain? When you are able to do the above suggestion that I've mentioned about double teaming 1 player, you will see an 'opening' to take the ball. By all means, slide the guy if you have to to either intercept the ball or commit a yellow card foul (opponent on the verge of breaking away and scoring once he gets past your player).

Defending can be difficult to master, I am susceptible to through balls and dribblers too =( but once you grasp the concept of defending as a unit, the opponents will play into your hand most of the time.

One final tip, do not rush into tackling the opposition. Prepare to be patient in pressing and keeping your defence intact first. In team instructions for 'when out of possession', you might want to consider these:
Frontline Pressure (your attackers will initiate the pressing first)
Wide (to push the opponents to the wings when defending)
Maintain Formation (keep the shape of your team, which will make it even harder for the opponent to break you down)
Defensive Line (set to 3, for me it is neither too low or too high. You may want to experiment with this as 3 works best for me)
Compactness (7, 1-3 will be spaced out too much & 8-10 will be too suffocating even for your own players. Again, this is subjective)
Numbers in Defence (Many. I've tried few and medium, I found that having many in defence makes the defensive work much easier)

I hope I have been of help, even if very little =) keep practicing (Master League with default players is a very good way of doing that. I am currently trying to bring up a Spanish League 2 outfit to the First Division) Cheers!:laugh:

 

[Rat Monkey]

My advice would be to forget about holding A. It is meant to automatically home in on the player and pressurise and the AI will decide if it tackles or not, which as you've experienced its really bad at. Tap A twice in a row quickly to pull off a tackle when you want. That alone will improve your defending.

To pressure a player, I use jockeying when getting close to an attacker(RT button held down, unless you've changed your controls) to get position on him and close him down. Its far more responsive in changing direction than just using the stick. If while jockeying, the attacker is getting away from you, just hold sprint for a split second to get back into position. If you do sprint, make sure you've held down the jockeying button because if you press it after sprinting there is a delay in going back into it, which means you lose a little bit of response time to the attacker which can make the difference sometimes.

Or, you could just hold A and sprint down to automatically close down the player quickly and then just tap A twice when you feel its the right time to tackle. Holding down just A is pointless in this game as your player moves really slow and is easily beaten. I would never use it by itself, at least use it with sprint if your going to do it.

Whatever way you do it always use the manual tackle by tapping A twice everytime you want to tackle.

This is a serperate part to what I've said above. Its about using teammate pressure by holding down X. I use this if I see an attacker who is close to being free to get a pass and be through on goal. I cover the free attacker with the player I'm controlling to cut him off, while allowing my teammate to pressurise the other attacker on the ball.

 

[sabocat]

Wow, thanks for the tips guys! I'm excited to try out your advice.