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PES 2021 Beginners Guide

A complete PES 2021 beginners guide covering first settings, basic controls, simple tactics, and the practice order that turns new players into competent ones.

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Every expert was once the player passing directly to the opposition and blaming the controller. The difference between those who improve and those who plateau is rarely talent; it is the order in which they learn, and whether the early weeks build foundations or bad habits.

This guide sets that order: settings that help, controls that matter first, tactics simple enough to execute, and a practice rhythm that makes each match teach the next one.

It assumes nothing except enthusiasm, and it points onward to the PES 2021 starter guide control foundations whenever a topic deserves its full treatment.

First Settings That Help

Set the difficulty where you win some and lose some against equal teams, choose a wide camera that shows both flanks, and leave assists generous. Those three decisions, explained in the difficulty and camera guides on this site, create a learning environment instead of an examination hall.

Pick one team and stay with it for the first twenty matches. Familiar players teach you what your inputs do; a new squad every evening teaches you only that everything is unfamiliar, which was already known.

The Five Controls That Matter

Pass, through ball, shoot, sprint, and the jockey: five inputs carry ninety percent of beginner football. Learn them in that order, in real matches, accepting the mess. learning the controls properly details each one; the beginner's discipline is simply refusing to practise the fancy inputs until these five are boring.

Sprint deserves its warning early: it is a spice, not a food group. Players who hold it permanently run out of control, out of stamina, and out of ideas in that order, while players who sprint in bursts, into space and away from pressure, suddenly look twice as fast on the same players.

Simple Tactics That Work

Choose a balanced formation with a back four, keep your defensive line at a sensible depth, and resist every advanced instruction the menus offer. A beginner's tactics should be a quiet background: the learning belongs in your decisions on the ball, not in a system you cannot yet diagnose when it fails. It is one of the details that separates PES 2021 from arcade football, and it is learnable with deliberate practice.

Attack down both sides across a match, even if one winger feels stronger. Variety now builds the complete habits that one dimensional play, however successful this week, will cap at the first opponent who notices.

Your First Matches

Judge early matches by moments, not results: the first time you play out from the back calmly, the first through ball timed instead of hopeful, the first goal built rather than gifted. Those moments are the curriculum completing itself, and they predict your future level far better than the scoreline does.

Play opponents near your level, human or AI. the mobile experience explained's mobile overview aside, the principle holds on every platform: close games teach, routs merely happen to you, and the occasional humbling by a much better player is tuition to be watched, not a verdict to be believed.

Practice That Fits Real Life

Improvement loves small, regular doses: three focused matches beat a nine match binge, especially if each session picks one theme, defending crosses, say, or finishing, and the theme survives the scoreline. Themes give losses a purpose and wins a syllabus.

Keep a tiny note of your recurring error, one line per session. Within a month it becomes uncomfortably specific, and that specificity is the whole secret: you cannot fix 'playing badly', but you can absolutely fix 'full backs dragged out by the winger', which is what the note will say.

The Mindset That Climbs

Treat every goal conceded as information with a timestamp, every defeat as a scouting report on yourself, and every plateau as a sign the current habits have finished teaching. The players who climb for years share exactly one trait: they stay curious longer than they stay frustrated.

Welcome to PES 2021. The first season is for foundations; the famous goals and the giant killing cup runs are scheduled, reliably, for everyone who builds them.

Frequently Asked Questions

A balanced, familiar team with no extreme weaknesses, used consistently for your first twenty matches. Familiarity teaches faster than star power. PES 2021 rewards the players who learn its systems patiently, and every guide on this site exists to shorten that learning.

With focused sessions and one theme at a time, most beginners become competitive at their level within a few weeks. The timeline matters less than the practice order.

Play a little, for fun and calibration, but build your base against comparable AI and friends first. Online punishes missing foundations before it can teach them.

Passing patience: moving the ball safely until a real opening appears. It teaches positioning, control, and decision making simultaneously.

Conclusion

Beginnerhood is a curriculum disguised as a struggle: settings that help you see, five controls mastered cold, simple tactics, themed practice, and notes on your own patterns. That is the enduring appeal of PES 2021: systems simple to start and deep enough to study for years.

Follow that order and improvement stops feeling like luck. Each match starts teaching the next one, which is the moment a new player quietly becomes a footballer.

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Karim Benali

Reviewed by

Karim Benali

Football Games Reviewer

Karim reviews football games on Android, testing controls, match engines, and career modes on real devices before any title is listed here.

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