I can confirm that this is very much the case. Outside of choosing when to make a substitution, the only thing you can do during a match is watch the game, switch between various pages of stats and alter player positions. And when playing team data online there's even less interaction, as even substitutions become automated.
As boring as that sounds, for some reason I'm still enjoying it.
@Mokong, just beat your team 2-0.
Here's my ID:
2B4C66D88
Online profile pages are up now too, here's mine:
http://microsite.nintendo-europe.com/NPFC/enGB/team.php?team_code=2B4C66D88
Seems to be a delay though. In-game my European Ranking is 207, and on the website it's 309.