L1 player switching in PES 2020 just like its predecessor, is sluggish, unresponsive and extremely frustrating when out of possession. You will often find that game selects the wrong player away from the ball or in more serious cases, you are unable to highlight anyone, leaving the AI always a step ahead. Higher difficulty settings, poor team condition and scripting within the game makes such a factor seem even more insufferable as you don't feel you're in control.

Thankfully there is a simple fix which drastically alters this aspect and makes playing off the ball far more effective and satisfying whilst alleviating some frustrations.

In the Top Menu, go to Settings > Options > Personal Preset Settings > User 1 (default primary)

This will bring up your personal settings which are useful for tweaking a host gameplay configurations. Navigate to the bottom of this list and locate the 'Team Mate Controls' option. This should be set to 'Assisted' by default. However, if you change this to 'Manual', you will now have total unassisted control over your AI players when not in possession. The player nearest the ball or its destined trajectory will now be selected first. Not only this, you will notice that you are able to quickly switch between players making it far more responsive.

If you would like to see my current settings, the screenshot capture above details my current gameplay configuration that works adequately against the AI and online.

Team Mate Controls v Cursor Change
There seems to be some confusion surrounding the difference between Team Mate Controls and the Cursor Change option. This isn't helped by unclear menu descriptions of the functions. Cursor Change allows you to switch between your desired players however, Team Mate controls allows you to select your players in the first place and snap between them simply using L1 in relation to the placement of the ball and its intended target. The function of Team Mate controls simply goes beyond what is described in-game and its apparent functionality. This guide intended to highlight something that people may not be familiar with, but could prove an essential tool for obtaining more control over your players without CPU interference or scripting taking precedence.


I hope this brief guide fixes or at least takes away some of the annoyances associated with the gameplay so please give it a try and see if you notice the difference. If you have any questions or additional tips for the best possible PES experience, please let me know in the comments and feel free to share the guide in the community if you found it useful.