The superior colliculus is one of the few structure of the brain that has been almost fully characterized, both at the structural and functional levels. Its deep layers are known to be motor layers whose endogenous or exogenous activation can trigger eye movement via a direct pathway to the eye muscles that traverse the brain stem and the spinal cord. We focused on the visual flow from the retina to the superior colliculus to propose a minimalist model of automatic encod- ing of saccades to visual targets. This model, based on simple local rules in a homogeneous population and well acknowledged properties, reproduces and explains several results of biological experiments. It could be then considered as an efficient minimalist model.