If you’re a pro I understand the appeal but this topic has a fair history. Back in the ye olde days of 23 when there was open communication elsewhere it was discussed at length that cheap tricks to make the game harder were unpopular. This included rubber banding (which I personally don’t like) and kick animation time - I think one of the Evo / Live 2 games did and it really sucked. You had to be ten meters in the clear while the AI was doing fifty meter passes on a dime.
Since AI routines to ‘play better footy’ will be a WIP for a long time, I think the only viable option is to make skills based play more difficult. Shorter QTE windows, faster kicking meters and so on. Best of all a new difficulty like this should be achievable - crank everything up, call it Ultimate Legend or whatever, give it a 1.3 XP loading on PT and so on. My two cents.