I want you to pay attention to his Neymar in this play. I know marking exists in this game, I use it myself sometimes, but… was he marking my RB when normally he should be marking the RWF? We’re not talking about the Deep Line instruction either, because with that instruction Neymar would have dropped back to form the defensive line while I had possession, not made that interception run. This is abnormal. Neymar starts the covering run toward Cafu before my opponent manually selects him. He could have been using Tight Marking on Cafu and Salah, but it honestly felt like the same thing was happening on the other flank as well. And in every damn area of the pitch… What is this? What are you even supposed to do against something like this?

Also, against this opponent it felt like his players were floating across the pitch, threading passes while my players couldn’t do anything. His team was made up only of featured cards, no Epics except that Neymar and Fiore. I’ll post the squad in the comments later, but aside from three players, everyone was rated 98–99. My Desailly and Van Dijk (two of the best defenders in the game right now) couldn’t take the ball off a free Mbappé. They felt invisible. Every time I scored, there were 300 rebounds until he scored from a kickoff glitch. I almost lost the match.

There comes a point where I start going crazy… Is my controller broken? Why can his Neymar defend and win the ball back so easily while I can’t defend even with a 106-rated Desailly? Why do his players with no defensive stats make cover runs like that while my Xabi Alonso at DMF just stands there watching despite having 100 DEFENSIVE AWARENESS? Am I pressing the wrong buttons when defending? Why can’t I win the ball back even when I make a tackle, while my opponent only has to run past me to keep possession? Seriously, tell me which buttons you’re pressing to defend... What’s the secret? Because I honestly don’t understand anything about this phase right now.

This feels strange… Is it scripting, or am I just not understanding something about the game?