I wish I recorded this on a video, but something happened a few days ago which made me realize just how broken defending is in this game. Basically, the opponent winger was coming down the flanks, I was totally anticipating that to happen and switched to my defender early to prevent the opponent from crossing the ball. I was up really close to the opponent winger and he didn't have any space to cross the ball, and yet somehow, the ball managed to pass between my defenders legs, as his animation for intercepting the ball left enough opening between his legs for that to actually happen. In other words, the opponent nutmegged a cross, and it would have been blocked if the defender just stood there and didn't attempt to block the it with his feet.

To make the matters worse, the cross somehow ended up having high enough trajectory for the opponent score a jumping header from the near post at a 160-170 degree angle over my goalie, hitting the side net on the far post. I can understand low cross passing between the legs of the defender or header from the far post, but high cross to the near post? It doesn't make sense to me in any way whatsoever.

I know crossing has been discussed a lot here in this sub, but I thought this example exemplified everything that is wrong with it. You can position yourself as best as you can to block attacks, but how defenders blocks and reacts to things like crosses are totally dependent on the AI, and the AI does seem to gimp you in that respect, especially when you consider that the same problem doesn't exist with opponent's defenders. 2nd, it seems like there is something really fishy with the ball physics which allows these kinds of anomalies to happen. I know these things have existed in the past, but I feel like it's so apparent on this game that the game is starting to remind of FIFA games I was playing a years ago.