Because they don’t understand what they are watching.
He doesn’t “go missing”, he thrives on those magic little flicks and passes to put someone in behind. If a team is sitting deep (or a low block as the nerds want to call it now) then he’s going to struggle to do that. He’ll still show for the ball all game but if there’s nobody making runs in behind there’s not a lot he can do with it.
Same for games against teams that like to have lots of possession, you won’t see much of him all game and then all of a sudden we get the ball and he finds that killer pass.
He’s a bit one dimensional in a sense, but my god that one dimension is fucking fantastic.