onuelver >> friday july 12 - 06:25

You can use also central defender on DM place. Well he is considered as weak player and will not give assists but defensively is better than oldschool DMs.

Balthazor >> sunday july 14 - 20:00

Maybe this will give some ideas...

https://rockingsoccer.com/en/soccer/info/player-1778966

This player is my test project, where I tried to find faster way for DM getting better star value and started with him as defender, later using him on midfield and giving passing training. As you can see, this was not best idea as passing doesn't give anything to star value. Maybe it will change after some seasons, when he has enough positional xp and more passing. Currently it shows him on DM position 5.75-6.9 stars from 7.9-9.2, which means almost nothing, probably he will be decent on that position, but I have currently better DM in team too. Never gave him extra retrainings. Pure central defenders were less than 2 stars, but were much more effective than those 5+ passing and 3 balls of dueling "old school" DM-s. 
But onuelver's suggestion is proved on highest level- with Estonian NT(just qualified to 7th final tournament in a row) in competitive matches. We had troubles with getting any normal DM to shortlist and so I used defenders as DM there too.