So I enquired about special abilities to top eleven support today, I asked about dribbler sa in particular bcus I've 3 of those in my starting Xi what they told me is that "A PLAYERS SPECIAL ABILITY IS ALWAYS ACTIVE 90mins OF THE MATCH" they also said that the special abilities boost certain skills in my case the dribbler ability boosts the dribbling and creativity of my player throughout the game even if it rarely displays in the live animation.
I wish I could post screen shots of the conversation with my mobile device