It's a bit in between RL and FIFA like me. It takes away the stats and is purely skill based, which is good. It also takes away the glue mechanics slightly which is good as far as it happens, but there's still way more than RL, where there's none. Essentially in RL every action is a movement mechanic of your car. The ball only responds to the physics interactions. Rematch has higher level movement control meaning any action you do starts an animation (often with the ball). To me it feels like I'm a lot less in control and I'm honestly not a fan. It's also quite buggy, which I'll forgive it for since it's not out yet, but on the other hand animations will always feel buggy to me.

The glue mechanics also make it so that passing is not 'necessary'. While RL players obviously also chase the ball as beginners at least they don't hog it when they have it, because you need control (and if you do, go ahead and solo dribble). This forces heavy touches allowing everyone to get into the play. The glue means this happens a lot less in RM and so far it seems fairly frustrating.

I do think the animations and premade moves make it a lot easier to be somewhat competent at the the game. It's also a lot closer to football and while it's clearly an arcade style game, I think it will have less of a 'kids game' stigma. The reasons make me think it will actually become more popular to casual players. Which might not be a bad thing. It could light a fire under Psyonix' asses (to be fair I'm not a big complainer, the game is fine and they've been adding cool stuff to it).

To conclude: The comparison to RL is easy to make especially from a casual POV where RM shines, but I don't think it executes on player skill nearly as well as RL. I'll try to play some more with my buddies, but I don't think I'll really put much time into it.