Had a few more games this afternoon, all online. I hate playing any games online with the general public, because the whole experience has always been toxic to me - and also, to be honest, I'm nowhere near the standard of most players (who play to win the game through its exploits more than to actually enjoy the game).
I have to say, it was pleasant. I could see the stats of my players making a difference, as well as fatigue. My possession-based defence-focused football didn't put me at a disadvantage (it didn't feel like I was playing "the wrong way" and would lose unless I started playing counter-attacking football).
(This may well be because nobody's figured out all the exploits yet and - more to the point - nobody's got a team of 90+ rated players yet, at which point I have no doubt it will become a pointless endeavour unless you're going to spend $$$ to keep up, and I have no interest in playing with, and against, the same ~50 superstar players anyway... Boring.)
As others have said, though... It's nothing like a next-gen football game, and it's just not in the same league as PES 2021 (which isn't a great game either, IMO - particularly not the AI, which is the most linear, basic, stupid AI I've seen in PES - and I have no desire to play it).
It feels like an indie football game, which you download on your phone out of curiosity, and delete after a day.
The ball physics are absolutely horrendous (the ball being a balloon filled with either cotton wool or helium depending on the situation), and for a game that's always had the fundamentals nailed-on, it's
absolutely crazy to me that we're here. But it's obviously because other platforms need a simplified gameplay engine.
I'm not seeing bags of potential - if anything, I'm seeing all the things they've done to simplify or "mobilify" the game, on and off the pitch. It's a better game than it was yesterday, but if this is how long it takes to add a bit of responsiveness (when it's still laggy as hell in many situations, by the way, leading to defenders smashing the ball against strikers when you tried to clear the ball seconds before)... I don't know how it will ever be a truly good console game. Only a mobile game.

Where are you at now in the search for a solid football game? PES 2021? FIFA 14? PES 5? FIFA 11?
I played PES5 for a while with the "Original Season" patch, ground out a season in the ML and that feeling of really struggling to get a 0-0 draw is something entirely missing from modern games (in general). To feel relieved to scrape a point... That feeling of hitting a real achievement when you get your first three. It's like a drug. That's the last game to really nail that feeling, I think.
The modern games are technically better, yet feel worse. PES 2021 has the AI of a Game Boy game, as beautiful as it looks on PC. I can't get past their dull, repetitive play. FIFA 16 is an amazing balance, but way too fast for me to really enjoy (and sliders/mods can't fix that without breaking something else, IMO). 14 (especially with the Classic Patch) is glorious, but a little too on-rails for me to lose myself in, with a lack of AI variety (however, for classic World Cups with friends, it's brilliant).
They're the ones I tend to play for an hour before getting too annoyed with one thing or another. Against friends using Parsec, they're all fun, but against the AI, too frustrating in some way.
Whenever the girlfriend sees me playing a football game, she says "oh good, you're wasting your time playing another football game you hate". She isn't wrong. I need help...