No, that was an indication of the shite refereeing.
It was shite Defending -and- Refereeing...
It was the same one-dimensional defending as always: Run, run, run, run, do not even THINK about anything, and just keep holding the Tackling button until eventually you win the ball back.
You cannot control off-the-ball Defensive runs... you can only "manually" control a defender.
There's so much more to Defending, you need to decide How and Where to Tackle; which is one of those things that we never do in Pro Evo.
Oh, and the fact that Diego Maradona made the perfect Defensive Midfielder... this is also indication that PES5 lacks something on the Defensive End.
Perhaps Konami should think about maybe adding New STATS for "Marking" and "Tackling". I feel that it is a bit out of hand when my Defensive Midfielders are Leo Messi and Sergio Aguero.
Further indication that To This Day; Konami have not bothered fixing this flaw, it's like they don't even bother with the Defensive Aspect of Football... even though Defending is 50% of Football.