Quantum physics is not about a game of soccer. It's about phenomena that do things that actually do look strange when just looking at particles.
I don't see how a "natural" description is any different from the word "real" here- fields describe things particles can't, especially when trying to use your "natural" intuition.
If you haven't yet watch the first half hour of the lecture I linked to - this makes the point way more clear than I ever could in a few comments. And it essentially settles the question. Besides the fact that there are so many people claiming that fields are real but at least for the moment I will assume that they are just wrong or until I hear a convincing argument that this point of view is wrong. There are some hints in some of the comments here that fields are really necessary in some circumstances but they are not specific and I am not knowledgeable enough to judge them. Will have to do some research on that.
And by the way I am in no way suggesting any classical particle model, even without fields you still have the entire quantum mechanical machinery and there are certainly non-classical things going on. The question is whether you really need fields to describe some aspects of nature or if good old quantum mechanics is good enough and quantum field theory just makes things mathematical more accessible.
I don't see how a "natural" description is any different from the word "real" here- fields describe things particles can't, especially when trying to use your "natural" intuition.