Competitive is the ONLY Way

I’m having a much better experience playing with Competitive mode in Manager Career Mode. I’m surprised, as I thought the Authentic Gameplay settings would provide a more realistic and challenging feel but it’s not at all that way. I was playing on Ultimate with all the added settings to make it more difficult with Authentic and it was terrible without much of a challenge at all. On Competitive settings, it’s much faster than I’d like, but even on World Class, the CPU is attacking me and taking shots. They are even using skill moves and beating my defenders. So, this is better. It’s certainly playable, but still ZERO fouls. I don’t get it. I have ref strictness max. This is my biggest issue and it’s really killing the game.