Behind Lamine Yamal's string of goals scored within two minutes of kickoff lies the mental preparation he undertakes before each match

What the two-minute flash illuminates

The clock had barely been running for two minutes since kickoff.

Lamine Yamal had already scored.

Wearing the Spain shirt, the 17-year-old steps onto the pitch this season as if it were he himself who sounds the starting signal.

The goal arrives before the stadium has even registered that the match has begun.

That speed doesn't feel like it can be explained by physical ability alone.

The prepared 'two minutes'

The early part of a match is often used by both teams as a time to feel each other out.

Watching. Warming up the body. Checking formations.

Spending the first few minutes as 'preparation time' is a fairly common sensation.

But Yamal doesn't seem to have that period of watching and waiting.

Or, to put it more precisely, it looks as though he has already finished that observation before kickoff even begins.

Before stepping onto the pitch, he seems to have already organised his sense of the opponent's tendencies in his mind and decided his first move.

Of course, what's actually going through his mind is something only he can know.

Still, when the figure of two minutes keeps repeating itself after kickoff, it's tempting to imagine that this isn't mere coincidence but the manifestation of a pattern of thought he has built up over time.

When does 'preparation' begin?

When you hear the word 'preparation' in football, what comes to mind?

Stretching, training, tactical briefings.

Warming up on matchday.

That is, of course, preparation.

But there is preparation that begins even earlier than that.

Where will the opponent create space?

What will my first move be?

If the first phase doesn't go well, what's the next option?

When Yamal's 'two-minute goal' repeats itself, it looks as though that accumulation of thought is simply surfacing on the pitch.

A 'dialogue' with Harry Kane

In that same match, Harry Kane was also there.

When Yamal strikes first, Kane answers.

The crossing of two wills on the stage of the Nations League, Spain against England, holds something that can't simply be summed up as an exchange of goals.

Kane, entering his thirties yet still piling up goals, and Yamal, continuing to stand on the biggest stages while still a teenager.

What lies between the two of them may not be generation or nationality, but a difference, or perhaps an overlap, in how they approach football.

Experience or instinct, which comes first?

Players who have been playing for a long time speed up their decision-making through experience.

On the other hand, the speed of a young player's judgement sometimes comes not from the volume of experience but from flexibility of thought.

I don't think Yamal is able to move right after kickoff because he's 'fearless'.

Rather, it may be that a structure already exists in his mind that lets him simply decide where to move.

It would be easy to settle the matter by calling it 'genius'.

But if we stop thinking there, I feel we'd be missing something important.

What the Spain squad embodies

Today's Spain squad has several 'players who move while thinking' coexisting within it.

Each holds their own individual assertion while also making that assertion function within the team.

That fusion sometimes produces an overwhelming 'flow'.

Whether against Croatia or against England, underlying the rhythm Spain creates is a sense that each player is constantly thinking about where they need to be for their teammates to move more easily.

If you isolate the moment Yamal scores, it's purely individual brilliance.

But looking at the match as a whole, it becomes clear that this brilliance is produced by the team's structure and by mutual trust.

When you set it alongside Japanese football

In Japan's youth development environment, the phrase 'decide quickly' is often used.

However, deciding quickly and making a good decision are not necessarily the same thing.

A decision made in haste can end up being nothing more than a reflex.

What makes Yamal's play so interesting is that you can sense intentionality of choice within the speed.

That movement doesn't look like it's fast 'because he isn't thinking'; it looks like it became fast 'because he was thinking'.

That difference isn't easy to distinguish just by watching from the outside.

But for the player himself, that difference must surely exist.

The way of living a 17-year-old chose: 'striking first'

On the grand stage of the Nations League, Yamal once again gave meaning to the opening two minutes.

Whatever situation arises during the match, he never abandons the stance of 'I'll be the one to make the first move'.

That can surely become a source of pressure at times.

The expectations are heavy, and the comparisons never stop.

People even talk about a dialogue with Messi, so large names are always placed around him.

Even so, on the pitch, he keeps moving according to his own judgement.

Rather than waiting for someone's instruction, he heads toward the place he himself feels he should go.

That figure seems to embody, at once, the freedom that football is supposed to possess and the weight of responsibility that supports it.

What is he thinking before kickoff?

The fact that there is a player who scores within two minutes is, taken by itself, just a record.

But once you start imagining what that player was thinking, what he was choosing, and what preparations he had made during the time leading up to it, in the quiet before the match begins, the landscape of football shifts, just slightly.

The time before stepping onto the pitch is as rich as the time spent on it, and probably just as important.

What are you thinking about, before the match begins?