On the higher difficulties you get no end of times where the opposition have literally 1 or 2 shots and score, particularly if you are wasteful. It's almost stressful if you get to 60 mins and have missed a few chances, because you know that Ascoli will suddenly turn into 1970 Brazil and put together an untouchable chain of passes and rifle one into the top corner past all your elite players. In EA's mind that kind of thing replicates real football, where sometimes you get punished for not taking your chances. Sometimes. With a vast difference in quality it happens 7 out of 10 games, and in the difficult games it's basically like playing with a handicap as you are going to be a goal down before the game starts.
Collision zones are absolute garbage and have been broken since day one, so stand up defending becomes a lottery, it takes a long time to know how to get around the glitches, and even then you can't rely on them. When you're playing a perfect defensive game and all of a sudden a goal comes from nothing you can accept it every now and again, but the scripting on this game is farcical at the higher levels. Difficulty levels in football games should be in the general game play, but that is not the case. It's easy to absolutely dominate possession and create chances, but there are certain situations in the game where you've seen this goal scored past you many times. For me it's either the give-and-go where the triangular pass is rifled into the top corner with random player - you can do almost nothing to stop that one. And the other is the sudden Beckham-esque cross from deep which perfectly reaches the back post for an almost unmissable header. Again, you'll be lucky to even get near intercepting or saving the ball.
Has to be said though, finesse finishing is often overpowered, anyone with over 80 is hard to either miss or get very close. Also long shots with the same rating, anything 25-30 yards out is a goal chance with an 80+ once you've had a bit of practise. FIFA always did like those, and the usual square pass dirty goals, which remain fairly easy.
I'm too much of a purist to really like this game. It's a shame Seabass never had EA's backing.