are you making tons of passes? it's an easy way to cover a lot of ground and skip adversary... a good way to win short "fights" is to have the player in the center pass the ball to one of the side player and then pass it to the center player again when he's free,after that you should have a clear shot at the door,note that
1) if you tap on a spot and then quickly tap on a second spot,you'll do two passes in a row
2) pass near a player and he'll dash to catch it
also when in a contrast,you can see on the top the chance you have to win it,if you think you are going to win it,pick the left option,it gives you less chance of victory but more chance of keeping the ball,if you pick the right one it gives you more chance of victory but the ball might go somewhere else (which is still better than "in the hand of your opponent") and lastly use special moves? they are quite usefull and in fact i think that sometimes they are even mandatory to use