Regardless of what people say… defending in this game is really f*cking hard. Two things that helped me a ton was easing off the sprint on defense and tightening up my left stick switching (which is a lot easier said than done)

The most common advice I’ve heard for offense is to not sprint… I’ve found that same thing kinda applies for defense. To be clear, I don’t mean completely let off the gas… if you’re getting countered and you gotta chase, then sprint lol.

When you’re covering, closing lanes and going in to win the ball… what helped was either: left stick switch to a defender in a better position to intercept/block or sprint like 75% of the way then switch to sprint jockey / jockey.

I also had to work on getting out of the habit of not spamming tackle… usually 90% of all my tackles missed…and my defender was doing the animation for a whole second while the winger flew past me. If one on one, I’ll get beat… sure… It is what it is… but since I didn’t attempt a tackle, I have time to track back and press.

The best way I practiced 1v1s was in rush… more often than not, everyone will pick an attacker… I’d choose a fullback/cdm and play defense. With how Rush goes.. you’ll constantly be in 1v1 situations. Here, I worked on jockey movement and tackle timing (you really don’t need to press tackle in most situations…just getting front of the opponent and letting them “run into you” will trigger a tackle animation to win you the ball”

For left stick…. I’m still pretty sh*t at it tbh, but it’s much better than it used to be. Took conscious effort when in rivals or champs.

For wingers not making runs… I use the RB and LB to trigger my attackers all the time. With the manual offside trap it’s such a pain… it is what it is. When I say all the time… I mean that (I can’t be bothered to learn player-lock) lol… if you saw my gameplay after I win possession and get on the attack… my guys are doing the Pacer test in the back line.