What makes Isagi Yoichi such a good striker?

Key points

• Isagi's Metavision grants him omnipotent vision of the field, allowing him to exploit opportunities that others cannot see.
• Isagi's spatial awareness, like Messi's, helps him anticipate scoring routes by understanding tactical weaknesses.
• Isagi's flow state, combined with deft off-ball movement and underrated skills, make him nearly unstoppable.

The one with the blue lock Isagi Yoichi is a hungry young soccer player who aspires to become the best striker in the world. However, the path to greatness is paved with countless obstacles, as he is tested at every turn and pushed to prove himself. But driven by his seemingly impossible dreams, Isagi always finds a way to emerge and stay in contention to achieve his goal. Becoming the best striker in the world requires a unique set of skills that are rarely mastered by one player.

Despite his young age, Isagi has already shown flashes of greatness, demonstrating that he has a bright future as a striker. In this article we will look at Isagi Yoichi's skills to understand what makes him such an effective attacker.

Isagi's omnipotent field of vision

Legendary footballers such as Cruyff, Zidane, Xavi, Pirlo and Xavi are equipped with an incredibly evolved pitch perspective that allows them to analyze all elements of the gameplay to have an accurate understanding of the flow of the game. In Blue Lock, this ability is described as Metavision, which gives players an almost omnipotent point of view of the field and allows them to exploit opportunities that other players can't even see.

Bastard München's Michael Kaiser incorporates this skill beautifully into his gameplay to play a brand of football that is not only skilful but ruthlessly effective. Kaiser's transcendent vision inspires Isagi to evolve his omnipotent visual field by relying on central and peripheral vision. With the ability taken to the extreme, Yoichi is able to accurately predict the spatial positioning of opposing players and thwart goal-scoring opportunities.

If I don't change, I will always be the same person. I came here to change my life. I came here to become the best in the world. Unless I beat someone stronger than me, nothing will change.

Perhaps the best advantage of Metavision is its use of evolved transcendent vision to create scoring opportunities. Great footballers like Zidane and Cruyff do it beautifully, and Isagi slowly learns to get good at it. Aided by Metavision, he even learns to steal the ball from opponents at crucial moments, drastically altering the flow of the game and shifting control in his team's favor.

Messi-like spatial awareness

Yoichi's natural gift

The players who manage to smell the goal and turn those premonitions into reality have left a mark in the history of the sport. Perhaps his greatest example is Argentine striker Lionel Messi, who watches the game closely with an almost supernatural intuition, allowing gaps in the defense to fully materialize with the help of his unique spatial awareness. As soon as these vulnerabilities in defense are fully understood, he swoops in to exploit them before the opposition can even begin to pick up on their tactical oversights.

Similarly, Isagi's intuition for game play, opposing teams' strategy, and understanding of players' weapons create visions for potential scoring paths that others cannot predict. These goal premonitions depend heavily on his extraordinary spatial awareness which takes into account every player and every movement on the pitch.

With my eyes and my brain I can see the future of the industry.

Just like Messi, Isagi perfectly turns these visions into actions, exploiting the enemy's tactical weakness to his advantage. Yoichi's premonitions are not only accurate, but they also materialize surprisingly quickly. If it weren't for his special spatial awareness, Isagi wouldn't be able to smell the goal, taking away one of his most effective weapons as an attacker.

The almost invincible flow state

Isagi's most powerful weapon

Described by Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as a state of optimal experience, the flow state is achieved when a person is completely absorbed in an activity. The experience can be so strong that some people even lose track of time and ignore all distractions. While explaining the concept to his students, Jinpachi Ego describes it as a state of concentration. Energized focus allows players to use their weapons at once, making it an incredibly difficult task to stop them.

Imagining a show and thinking too much is too slow. This thinking model is obsolete. Just feel it and move. Believe. Trust in my abilities. All my nerve fibers. All my senses. Pour it all out right now and react!

Yoichi Isagi, in his flow state, uses Metavision to gain an omnipotent vision of the field, which then allows him to create a vision of the goal. With premonition as a model, Isagi uses a combination of different skills such as direct shots, positioning and off-ball movements to turn the vision into reality and score a goal. When overwhelmed by this state of pure concentration, it becomes nearly impossible to stop Yoichi as his opponents struggle to read his moves. For this reason, the flow state is probably Isagi's greatest weapon.

Incredible movements without the ball

Yoichi's unglamorous recipe for mastering positioning

Although ball control and possession are an important part of the game, movements without the ball are rarely appreciated. Some of the most legendary players to play football and reach the pinnacle of the sport rely heavily on it to read the game and gain a split-second advantage over their opponents. Christiano Ronaldo, Robert Lewandowski, Son Heung-min and Kylian Mbappé are all famous for positioning themselves appropriately to seize scoring opportunities by breaking through defensive lines.

When Isagi realizes the importance of off-ball movement, he reinvents himself to adapt the skills in his arsenal and becomes good at it. Watch how good attackers exploit blind spots to get into better positions and create scoring opportunities. Despite not being taught about it, Yoichi shows incredible adaptability and learning ability to evolve by inculcating strategic positioning into his game. Off-ball movement later becomes one of Isagi's most useful weapons which helps him score many goals.

Underrated field skills

In addition to metavision, flow state, spatial awareness and off-ball movement, Isagi Yoichi possesses many other abilities that make him a dangerous rival. His direct shots are not on par with those of the best players in the world, but they are still powerful and accurate enough to score clean goals, even from unconventional positions. Isagi's technique is nearly flawless when it comes to hitting the ball, which combined with his control makes him extremely difficult to defend against.

Isagi is also gifted with incredible reflexes. He used it intelligently for defensive and offensive purposes. Interestingly, some of his best directed shots were made possible thanks to his exceptional reflexes. Yoichi's positioning is another of his most underrated skills. He has proven time and time again that he knows exactly where to position himself to maximize his scoring opportunities. Being an ideal striker, he understands the many facets of the game and combines his different skills to develop an effective and complete attacking style that helps him compete with the best of the best.