From my understanding of the game, you need to consider two things:
1. You cannot mold a player into being brilliant, he just has to be.
This thread should be helpful and the guy who wrote says that he just focused in getting the right players, and that the tactics were secondary. So in order to get a player that gets the balls and can assess the situation quickly as well as get the ball to where it needs to be, you will need the right stats: Creativity, Decisions, Technique, Passing and Flair are absolutely essential. Creativity will allow your player to see all of the options, which includes the difficult killer balls, etc. Decisions will allow him to make the right choice frequently, and Flair will give him the balls to do the stuff that makes the best playmakers so unique. Passing and Technique will allow him to pull it off. In order to get the best out of the player he should have good First Touch, Anticipation and Off-the-ball so that he basically has more time on the ball to assess the situation, and having good Balance and Strength to hold the ball is also good. Composure goes hand in hand with Decisions so it too is important. Really, other than Bravery, Influence, Jumping, Natural Fitness, Stamina and the rest of the technical attributes, anything else is quite beneficial.
2. I think the passing options are supposed to be seen as limitations. At short you're telling the player not to look ahead and pass it to whoever is availae nearby, at long you're telling him to look upfield and bomb it to whoever they see, whereas with direct you're telling them to look for goal as quickly as possible. IMO, midfielders should be direct, everyone else is short. The direct setting is like giving the player more responsibility, you're telling him to create a goal, not just approach it. Wit short your defenders and strikers will get rid of the ball and move on. Assuming you've set up the formation correctly, you will avoid the tiki-taka of doom where your back 4 and DM pass it to each other continuously. This is why my DM is usualy a deep-lying playmaker, because he will look for that pass instead of keeping it short. Long-balls are for weaker teams, I never use it.
So, basically, in order to get a midfielder to control play and spray beautiful passes, what I do is set him up a deep-lying playmaker (haven't used the classic tactics in this edition, so don't remember how I set it up there), set him as the playmaker, make him the only DM, high creative freedom and roaming, set everything other than throughballs to rarely and set throughballs at often. If he has the right stats (and tries killer ball often), he will work out.
I think the important thing to remember is that it's not about what you tell him to do, but what you tell everyone to do. If you want Total Football (or close to it) you will need players who have high mental stats all across the board, especially in Teamwork, Anticipation and Creativity and Off-the-ball. Your playmaker can't do anything if they don't move properly. I have everyone except for the defenders on high creative freedom and roaming, seems to work.
That was longer than I intended, so the summary is: Stats, direct passing, creative freedom, roaming.
