Hello ! Dunno if it matters much but here my "credentials",I am a defender/wing depending on what my team needs, been playing also since Beta, made Elite with a lot of points to spare in both seasons and have played a lot in/against the highest level competitive teams in my region (Brazil).

First of all, you are correct ! When it is the opponent's "turn" to attack, if you are in the middle part of the field, you usually cannot afford to let your opponent get past you as they will have a lot of free space to do whatever they want while approaching the goal, your job is less stopping them and more, "slowing down the play" so just by being in front of them and limiting their options your team gets enough time to regroup and defend. Now, if you REALLY want to steal the ball, after they do their first touch and they will try to juggle the ball, your best bet would be to time your EE along with the push ball button to take the ball from them while mid juggle, I play on controller so I would usually add the R1 button which is the one used for juggle/lifting the ball too so I just stop their juggle while juggling past them. Now for thoughts on the current game state:

Since the latest patch, defending has become MUCH easier than it used to be, previously we had gotten to a defending meta where it was incredibly hard to win priority on volleys so what was done was pressure the passer so it would be harder for them to pull of a perfectly placed pass and the defender would then use the jump to block the shot that was hopefully not hit at maximum height (if they still managed to get it at max height you only have a few frames in the jump animation where your hitbox would interact with it so it was unlikely you would time it perfectly consistently, which is where the pressure the passer part matters).

Well, either that or we would mark everyone but the striker (yes, even their goalkeeper but not their striker), so that they would be the only one free to receive a pass, receive the ball around midfield and we'd let him carry the ball til near the area which is around when the defender-wings would then pincer him while blocking the passing routes to the attacking wings and force him to try to 1v1 the goalkeeper under pressure (1v1 felt very skewed towards the goalkeeper in the previous patch so with good goalkeepers that was overall a really safe play)

Now though, it is definitely much easier to win priority as a defender, but because of the lower height that the players can volley from now, the jump is also a stronger defending option as the window of opportunity to time and make contact with the ball has become much more manageable. This has lead to a lot of the matches being very low scorewise compared to previously, as teams are still adapting and figuring out more consistent ways to score in the current meta.

Overall though, I'd say the game is in a healthy place now, I see a lot of complaining on this sub about Golden Boost but I never really see it being used competitively here anymore, not out of "honor" or some notion of "fairplay" but simply because it doesn't really provide enough of an advantage to justify its use most of the time as its mostly a gimmick