Mario Strikers Charged online questions

Hi, I'm considering buying this game one day. I'm both a soccer and a Mario fan, and the game seems to be quite some fun. Since the game has online options, I'll probably play that quite often, so I have 2 questions:
1. Is it fun to play the game online?
2. Are there a lot of player playing that game online?
3. Does it run smoothly? (I live in Europe)

I live in Europe and have that game. There are plenty of people online to play against and it can be fun at first but soon becomes very annoying when you find people who use the same tactic/move over and over (and over and over and over) again to beat you.

This is a very solid game offline. Until You get to the striker cup or do insane difficulty. The CPU is VERY cheap but it is possible to beat them. Online play is kinda laggy and just like everyone else said theres a shot where people online bounce the ball off the back wall and score every time. Every single person ive played online does this. But fun offline game. Only about 35 Bucks at gamestop. I bought it to keep me occupied until the new play mario tennis comes out. That and mario tennis 64.