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Konami has announced that it’s become the official partner of Arsenal Football Club. This announcement follows Konami’s partnerships with other world-famous clubs such as Valencia CF, Inter Milan and Fulham FC. This partnership sees the North London club’s full squad, all of the kits and the Emirates Stadium perfectly recreated in PES 2018. Arsenal have been one of the most successful English sides in the Premier League era, but recently its success has waned following the glory years of the Invincibles, where they went an entire Premier League season undefeated.
Just like its previous partnerships with other teams, Konami will be given access to the Arsenal squad and be able to digitally scan the entire first team squad, implement Player and Team ID mechanics relative to the team, and even reproduce each player’s characteristics. So there’ll be 70 minutes in a game where Mesut Özil is completely anonymous before conjuring up a moment of magic.
Naturally everyone involved is chuffed, and Arsenal’s chief commercial officer, Vinai Venkatesham, wanted to share the joy, saying, ‘Our working relationship with Konami to date has been extremely successful from a licensing perspective and we are delighted to extend this and welcome them as an official partner’.
Perhaps this partnership deal is all part of Konami’s masterplan, and by licensing each individual team maybe they will be able to get around EA’s stranglehold on the Premier League licensing rights. Whatever your thoughts at least you’ll be able to stick the official Arsenal team lineup in the Champions League this season, unlike in real life.
PES 2018 is out now on PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One and PC.
