"In the Seabass interview he claimed the he wanted to "make the game fun". I know our definition of fun includes the words realistic and challenging. IMO, "fun" to the developers means arcade. Kinda scary."
From what I can tell, the whole "fun and easy to play" merely amounts to a change of the control scheme. You no longer have to press R1 or R2 to stop the ball, as you can do that by letting go of the analog. Also, the AI is smarter and will run into open space more, and not always require you to command then to run forward.
Fortunately, it seems that's all they are referring to.
"*"You're quickly hounded by the opposition". If this happens for 90+ minutes in every game from every team how realistic is that?"
It's... Not.
Same thing happens in 2008, unless you play on REGULAR or below.
I wish there was some video of some HUMAN vs CPU on the two highest difficulties. That would be most telling.