Billy Sharp has entered the sunset phase of his career. The phase where he admires the setting sun from his home near the beach, that is. The phase where he drives along Sunset Boulevard.
This is not, he stresses, the time when he fades away, light dimming as he sinks silently out of view. Even though Sharp is 37 and he is, as far as English football is concerned, almost beyond the horizon.
Amid a clutch of loan spells and permanent moves to Scunthorpe, Doncaster, Southampton and Leeds, Sheffield-born Sharp is indelibly associated with Sheffield United, where he scored 129 goals in 377 appearances across three spells before his release in the summer after a year in which he scored only three goals and was mostly used as a substitute.
But last Saturday he kicked off a home game to the strains of Tupac Shakur’s California Love: the line “California knows how to party” echoing around a stadium ringed with palm trees.
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The move to Los Angeles Galaxy was sudden; he was mulling over offers from a couple of English clubs when he received an invitation to help rescue the club’s faltering Major League Soccer playoff chase. Javier Hernández’s season-ending anterior cruciate ligament injury in June created a vacancy in the Galaxy forward line. “It was a no-brainer, really,” Sharp told the Guardian.
“I didn’t really have much time to think about it. I got the phone call and I couldn’t wait to get here. As soon as I got the visa, I was raring to go. It took me a couple of games to get up to speed but I feel good now and I’m really enjoying it.”
“For us, it was a [player] who we felt could be as plug-and-play as you could possibly get from outside the league because of his experiences, because of the nature and the challenges of the different levels that he has played at, and also because of the humility that he brings to a team and to a locker room,” the Galaxy head coach, Greg Vanney, told the Daily Breeze.
Coming off the bench, Sharp scored a late penalty on his debut, a 3-0 win over Chicago Fire on 26 August. More goals followed against St Louis City and LAFC, and a hat-trick in a 4-3 win over Minnesota United saw him named MLS Player of the Matchday.
With six goals in six games he became a starter, one of the hottest forwards in the league, and the post-season looked possible. But a 2-1 defeat by Seattle Sounders on Wednesday…