With young players, the hardest, and in my opinion, the most important single aspect to get across is that the closest person to the opponent with the football does not have the responsibility to win the ball! Once defenders understand this, about 90% of diving in is eliminated and the attackers job becomes much harder. It also reinforces the next most important concept: that somebody had better be moving to cover the space behind the closest defender! That is the player who will, most often, wind up winning the ball.
You can demonstrate this quite easily by selecting the best defensive soccer player on the team, placing that player isolated out on the pitch, point to a goal for him or her to defend, and then tell them to “get the ball” from you. Then, simply dribble up to the player, push the ball past, into space, and run onto it. If you can get the defender to step towards you, you can do this quite easily.
Ask the team why this was so easy. Now ask how you can prevent it from happening. Somebody should come up with having a teammate behind the pressuring defender. Now repeat the demonstration with another opponent who has been instructed to cover the space. Also ask the closest (pressuring) defender to not win the ball unless a mistake is made by the attacker. Run it again and you should see a huge improvement.
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