Sheffield United's Billy Sharp enjoying family time and great memories

Leo has become a back-garden internet star by emulating historic goals scored by the likes of Paul Gascoigne, Cristiano Ronaldo and Alan Shearer, and Sheffield United's captain has been enjoying the chance to spend some quality time with him.

For all that, though, he is hopeful talk of a mid-May return to training proves to be correct.

“The weather's certainly helping, he's been asking, 'Daddy can we do this, can we do that?'” said Sharp senior. “It's nice to be out in the fresh air spending good quality time with the kids.

“The 24-7 bond is nice, to get to do all the things I don't get to when I'm swanning off playing football.

“To see him progressing in the lockdown has been one of the good things about this, he's really got the bug at the moment. He's been out there every day and loves kicking a ball around the garden.

“He knows where the net is but I can't do the free-kicks he's doing!

“I started off with tapping them in from two yards and now he's curling them around mannequins and up and over the wall. He's had a lot of fun with it and he's recreating all sorts of goals. It's nice to see people inspired by him. His friends are giving him goals to score and he's doing the same. Unfortunately he's not chosen one of mine yet!”

Despite that, there have been plenty of opportunities for Sharp to look back on some of the highlights of his Bramall Lane career, having taken his boyhood team from League One to the brink of a first European campaign.

“The media team at the club do a great job putting stuff out to for the fans to engage with and it's great for the players as well because we see photos we haven’t seen because we were celebrating at the time,” he said. “It's impossible to see everything at the time so there have been interviews, goals and videos it’s been great to look back on it, and reminisce – just to see what we’ve achieved together is fantastic and we just want to keep working hard and achieving more things together.”

The Football League has written to its clubs telling them not to expect to be back in training together until May 16 at the earliest, but Sharp is hoping that proves a realistic return date for Sheffield United too.

“We've heard mid-May (mentioned) which seems realistic,” he said. “I believe the curve is starting to flatten, I'm trying to not get too downhearted watching the news because it's hard to take it all in but hopefully we can see the curve go down and the pandemic put to bed and we can continue with normal life.”

Hard and fast plans are impossible until more is known about the progress of the virus, and the Government's response to it, but the Premier League clubs are due to meet via video conference on Friday too try to flesh out contingencies.

The expectation is that when matches do resume, they will be played behind closed doors. Sharp thinks it is a price worth paying if it means coming back more quickly.

“Football's about the fans for me,” he said. “Scoring goals, you get the emotion from the atmosphere in the stadium. It will be weird but it's going to be the same for both sides so we've got to adapt quickly.

“It will be a lot better playing behind closed doors than not at all, that's for sure.”

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