I think a lot of us felt a bit like that when we started playing.
The thing about this game is that when you're not playing it well, it looks and feels bloody horrible. Until you get used to the feel and rhythm of taking first touches with L2, putting a bit of whip on passes and shots, knowing where and when to play a first time long pass or a little chipped through ball or a backheel, how to speed up and slow down play... until you get into the groove of all that, it can look a bit like a load of zombies crashing into each other with a ball bouncing around somewhere nearby.
I never thought of selling the game because I always sensed there was something great in there, but I had a few days where I was just thinking WTF, basically. Really frustrated, it didn't seem to look like football, everything felt weird and sluggish, no one making runs, CPU seemed unable to play properly etc etc.
What happens is, you persevere and quite quickly it all falls into place. Once you get the "feel" of it and start being able to do what you want, games begin to open up and feel much more realistic. You get that ebb and flow, passages of play start to make sense. You discover how to build a move, what you can and can't do. You learn to spot player runs, and how to move in order to make your teammates start running (they won't just bomb up the pitch like headless chickens unless you're using "quick counter" strategy, but they will move around more as you start to build up play). You realise that what feels like your players being stupid and immobile is actually a fairly realistic system to stop you pulling off inhuman twists and turns, and soon you work out how to move fluently within that system. Soon, you can create space for yourself by switching the ball from foot to foot, or jinking through a small gap, and so on and so on. You start to spot which teams will just ping long passes down the middle and which will try to play football against you (it's all in the "Management Edit" and "Team Style" settings, though of course Konami haven't bothered to make all of these accurate, and have set too many teams to "Long Ball", so you may have to change them for some teams, or wait for someone to post suggested changes on a forum like this... in the meantime I would suggest Porto as an opponent who try to play proper football).
Seriously, give it some time. There's a lot of depth in this game, and because of that it can seem quite weird until you get the hang of it. It's not a pick up and play thing like FIFA, where you go "wow" on your first game - it takes patience. The weird "restrictions" you're feeling are what give the game its realism. The problem is that when you start with this game you naturally try to play "through" them, rather than with them - and when you do that, what you see on your screen looks anything but realistic. And you're right, until the game clicks with you, it's not much fun. Once it does, it's amazing and you see all this stuff in a new light.
You're right about the cursor switching, though - and the odd bit of weird AI behaviour. Even those of us who are really, really into this game now will freely admit there are some fairly big annoyances. It ain't perfect, but what can you do?
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for each R2 direction.. which i believe one trick can also be done using button & analog combo, right ?
