## 4 Discussion
The proposed task focuses on soccer actions, which combines decision-making, response time, and technical execution accuracy, aligning with previous studies that have utilized small-sided games [13; 17; 20], LSPT, or LSST to evaluate the consequences of mental fatigue [12]. Therefore, conditioning staff could incorporate these brief cognitive tasks into regular training sessions to help athletes improve their mental resilience and performance under pressure, ultimately enhancing their ability to make quick decisions and execute technical skills during matches. For instance, conditioning staff could implement the 2 min Stroop test as part of their warm-up routines or as a transitional drill between physical exercises, allowing players to experience cognitive load without significantly disrupting the flow of practice. Additionally, conditioning staff can design tasks that simulate real-game situations under conditions of mental fatigue induced by cognitive tasks, such as the Stroop test or dual-tasking. They can also incorporate tasks that involve interaction with a partner to mimic the variability and unpredictability of a competitive environment, making the activities practical and relevant for soccer training. The cognitive involvement of the tasks also increases with a higher number of players, leading to higher training intensity [48]. However, conditioning staff should not perform it close to the competition [49]. This study has some limitations that should be acknowledged. Firstly, this cross-sectional study was conducted only with male players. Therefore, results cannot be extrapolated to female soccer players. In addition, although the sample was small, the statistical power achieved was acceptable. Moreover, we used several participants higher than the 89% of the studies reported by [PERSON] et al. [19] in their systematic review. Nevertheless, the results should be taken cautiously, and we encourage future research to expand the number of participants to establish consistent findings. Secondly, participants were recruited from Group I of the Extremadura Second Division (Spain), and professional players may behave in the same way as non-professional players. In this regard, however, the participants were non-professional soccer players who had jobs before training, potentially influencing mental fatigue levels. Thirdly, the study did not consider or quantify the subjective fatigue of each participant. Fourth, the sleep, motivational state or negative feelings that players may have had were not controlled. Fifth, the age difference in participants could have influenced physical and technical performance in response to mental fatigue [22]. Future studies should consider homogeneous age groups or analyze the effects of mental fatigue in each age group to obtain more precise conclusions. Sixth, the experimental design could have included more temporal choices of protocols to induce mental fatigue or other types of training tasks. However, this initial simplified study could establish a basis for more in-depth investigations that could enrich the understanding of our proposal. Nevertheless, this study also has strengths. For instance, it was conducted using an ecological task that combined time response, decision-making, and technical execution accuracy, while avoiding the need for extensive resources for task administration, measurements, and subsequent data analysis. Furthermore, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to observe a potential behavioral effect of a very short-term (2 min) protocol for inducing mental fatigue.