How is it that a team that is 9.59 star rating can beat a team that is star rating 27 on full match bonus. The other team at 9.59 only had 3 good rated players?

In the early levels the 8 and 10 seem to be disproportionately important. So if his 10 was better than your and he had better strat it is not uncommon for that to happen.

As black monks said will depend on what position those 3 high rated players were

It could also have been you were kicking directly to their good players and they just ran through you. Even if you kicked to a poor "receiver", if the man behind comes in and takes the ball and is one of the better players with stats in the right places, that could also be a problem. Tactics depending on who you are playing play a big part in being successful in this game and it is worth taking the time to study your opposition in advance. This becomes even more important the higher level you become yourself. Early on it is easy to beat teams up to 25-30* above you but when you get to higher levels, more players know what they are doing and it is much harder to beat them without proper tactics and pre-match analysis just like the real game.