1. The center backs, IRL, spread out to be attacking options. This is why a forward has to run back and forth and put pressure on them in possession. They do not stay in a defensive attitude while their team is on the attack. The forward has to react to the center backs, not the other way around.
2. The DMF does not sit back in front of the center backs, they stand in-between the forward and the next midfielder, most times the AMF or SMF (if they tuck in for FB play). This is the absolute key to how space is created. If the DMF doesn't hang back slightly, all the space in the world can be created.
That combination is what you see in modern football, old football, any football - it's a fundamental. You don't go to step 2 (adv instructions, etc) without achieving step 1 - the fundamentals.
The problem with positioning is that we excuse the lack of fundamentals for something advanced. If it was addressed, and we stopped allowing it to be chalked up to the laundry list of settings, so many other areas of the game would be improved.
I don't want to start a discussion/dick measuring about this, but I do love tactics and writing about it and studying it is what I have done for the last five years. What you say about the center backs is actually a recent development, like, less than ten years ago that is was really, really weird to ask of a center back to create passing lanes while attacking. They, at most, moved a bit to help out the goalkeeper or fellow defender to play the ball out from the back and that was a special case in certain teams. Currently, playing out from the back with a trained system is important and thats why now you see center backs going to the wings (!) to receive the ball, etc. Pressure on them is not something new, but this aggressively and so far as to the corner kicks etc is a reaction to that playing out in a systemized way. This kind of pressing is something very new. Teams in 2010 did not press like this:
https://twitter.com/GolDeVestuario/status/900777495531855874
Nor did they play out from the back like that. The result is that as soon as the pressure is broken, there's a loooooot space to run and play.
About numer 2), yes it would ideally be that the DMF occupies that half space between lines, but that is not always true. Is up to the player being good and the tactics being good for that to happen. It can be that the DMF goes pressing to far up so his back is exploited, or that he stays too down, and while his team is pressuring, there's uncover space between his teammates and him. And that is VERY common. Specially now that teams have decided to press like they do. It was not that much when teams didn't and instead chose to fall back as soon as they lost the ball, reorganizing their shape first before thinking of stealing the ball.
I think positioning is important and I would say there is a problem if we wouldn't be able to set up teams tactically to not leave those gaps. And we can. It would be a huge problem if we couldn't or if the game didn't allow us to replicate this modern styles that although create those gaps, give other advantages.
There's no need to mix the way you think football should be played, that is what you call fundamentals, with what is possible and happens A LOT in real life, specially now that those kind of tactics are a trend. As is, by the way, the ping-pong passing. What was wrong in PES 2017 - and FIFA - is that teams could do it no matter technique stats and team tactics. In this 2018, I played against and with different teams and I felt that with some teams the CPU and I could play like that and with others no so much, which is what I would hope for the game.
P.S.: sorry if something sounds too blunt. English is my second language and sometimes what sounds right in tone both in my head and my native language, is impolite or something like that. I respect you and like your comments on the game.
Kinda like the sliders 
