I barely played the first one only. I'm really just a casual gamer, not alot of extra time, so how hard is this to learn the basics up to intermediate play 
If you are going to play offline it shouldn't take you too long, if you plan on playing online...Well, play player matches on sim stamina settings for a long while first...The ranked guys will just make the game no fun for you.
Yup. If you just want to play offline with friends or against the computer, than it's not too bad. If you want to be really good, there is a very steep learning curve. As the above poster mentioned, don't bother playing online unless you've logged quite a few hours before hand to really learn the mechanics of the game.