Firstly, thank you for your kind comments about the review!
In regards to the point you made, I agree that it doesn't force you to sprint or zig-zag, but it certainly encourages it. Far too often, I felt punished for trying to move the ball around the pitch, and found that I got much more success when I simply took hold of the ball as a speedy winger (or even as a speedy defender!) and started hitting top speed and making quick turns to exploit the underpowered defense.
Of course, multiplayer contests are always going to have more instances of this than CPU encounters due to player skill, but the mechanics are still very unbalanced. I played many multiplayer matches with everything from people who were clearly new to the series, to friends who I've been playing FIFA with for a decade. It was still a very similar experience -- one of frustration when I simply felt powerless to do anything, despite doing very little wrong in terms of defensive positioning, and dissatisfaction when I scored easy goals that didn't require any footballing skill. I won about 75 % of my multiplayer matches during the review period, but I can't say many of them were that enjoyable.
It's in those instances where FIFA 17 feels like a huge step backward in my view. Luckily, it balances that out with some fantastic content in other areas.