Shooting immediately

Hold down fire to shoot the ball.

The computer always has the 0 ping/latency/reaction time advantage. No way around that.

I would guess that the computer can 'cheat' too. In order to shoot rather than pass in SWOS, you have to hold the fire button down for a number of frames - I'm not sure exaclty how many but I would imagine a press lasting under 4 frames triggers a pass, and over this is a shot. The computer opponent is probably able to just trigger a shot immediately.

(Much in the same way that the computer Blanka in Street Fighter 2 could trigger a rolling ball attack without having to push back for 2 seconds)

I've often wondered how the CPU opponent is able to do certain things though - I don't play 1 player much, but when I do, I think over 80% of the CPU goals come via shots from rebounds. I've never seen a human player score goals in exactly that way.

If you play the megadrive version, you have the A-Button, which triggers a shot immideatly. Downside is, you cannot curve it the way you want, it's auto-directed towards the goal, which sometimes ends up in weird looking shots.