Most effective phrase to get people to stay away?

Just took my pup for a walk and sat down on a bench for a while do some people watching. This woman with a tiny dog started walking directly towards us. I repeated ‘can you give us space’ about 10 times and she just kept saying ‘huh?’ while walking closer. She brought her dog all the way up to us and my then got excited and lunged at hers (in a friendly way, but still not okay and what I’m trying to train him not to do). It really annoyed me but I also feel a bit defeated because I did really try to keep her away and feel like I failed. My pup will probably be fine but I really don’t want to expose him to too many situations like that because one time it might not be fine.

I struggle to speak up in general, but I try my best to advocate for my dog. I’m apparently not very good at it though so I’m looking for some advice on 1) a script to say that people will understand, as apparently ‘can you give us space’ is not clear? And 2) a phrase I can put on my dog to help get the message across without having to interact with other people. I’ve considered one of those yellow ‘give me space’ leads or a blue ‘in training’ one but not sure how effective they are.

I’ve tried ‘in training’ and ‘do not pet’ patches on his harness. Highly ineffective 😂 people would stroke him while asking while they couldn’t..???? If they even noticed the patches. They’re lucky he’s really friendly, but he’s a big dog and he’s still learning manners and I really need space to be able to allow him to learn to be less amped up around dogs/people. I am working with my pup on disengaging from distractions but at the moment, he often stares and really wants to go and say hello, which people think is cute 🙄 So like today, it’s not always possible for me to be the one to walk away from a situation to get space unless I forcefully drag him which I’d rather not do unless it’s a safety issue as I think that’s just adding tension to a situation. Pls help, I’m starting to hate the general public and becoming a bit bitter 😂😅