On the (only) point of disagreement – I see your point. For a little while I was quite astounded and enamoured by the fact that
finally my team would push up to the halfway line and a little ahead, especially +1 on attacking. Hadn't seen that in a PES game in a long, long time. But rarely would you get a defending side
also pushing up to meet them to compress play, so you practically never see that compressed band of 20 players about the entire width of the midfield circle.
In so many real matches, both teams have pushed up to that sort of distance, and this band of players roves back and forth, usually getting a bit more congested on one side or another. It's much more obvious from the stands, and I think one reason we don't get this on football sims is that they want to replicate the TV viewing experience, where rarely do you get overhead shots. So people don't even notice that the shapes and the spaces are completely inaccurate.
As a result, you still – even with better pushing up – are able to pass a ball from your CB to your CF in pretty much every match in eFootball. There's still acres of space, and in my experience nothing resembling the kind of midfield battle we see all the time in modern football. Nothing where a team really has to focus, patiently, teasing players out of zones to "unpick" a midfield. It's just not there, in my opinion.
So maybe you mean more than the example you're giving here of how you use midfielders to win matches. If all you did mean was that it was vital to use midfielders to press/recover than break the back line – then yes, I agree that's probably more vital than it's ever been, though it's always been recommended (funny fact: that Mazen guy who was in here for ages being a prat said he was the first person to offer this piece of tactical advice for eFootball

).
So I don't know what to make of what you're saying outside of that sort of case really. Maybe sometime you can paste a video of a good midfield battle. But insofar as I take that phrase to mean what I outlined above – I'm frankly very sceptical!
Agreed, btw, about the conflated tactical systems on PES, the rigidity, and the weird positional shit (dropping AMFs being number one bugbear). So I do think it's a good thing the tactical options are stripped back and that the 5 options on offer are more coherent. But now they need to add stuff back in to make it tweakable, and to be able to get fine-grained with pressing options (more so than what PES had) and how the team should play in different zones and different phases of play.
The thing is, I just don't think they've the appetite for these sorts of changes, and I'm very dubious whether they'll implement things to my satisfaction. I don't think it's a mistake that we only have 5 tactical options and no opportunity to tweak. I think that they wanted that simplicity for mobile crossplay and a "level playing field" on the esports scene. To the extent they allow some depth and complexity, it will be because they decide to veer away from those ambitions.