While his Leeds United team-mates relax in Mallorca, Japan and Dominican Republic, title-clinching goalkeeper Karl Darlow is already back to work.

Willy Gnonto and Joel Piroe are in Japan, where the latter has been dining out with Ao Tanaka. Mateo Joseph is holidaying and keeping up his fitness in the Dominican Republic, while Ilia Gruev relaxes in Mallorca. Darlow, who replaced Illan Meslier for the final seven games of the Championship season and remained unbeaten, is out in Spain with the Wales national team preparing for their World Cup Qualifiers against minnows Liechtenstein and Group J favourites Belgium.

A latecomer to the international scene, Darlow has put himself in position to be Craig Bellamy's Wales number one and started the first two qualifiers - a win over Kazakhstan and a draw with North Macedonia. The idea of seeing the job through to qualification and a major tournament is dream-like for Darlow, whose grandfather Ken Leek was selected for the 1958 Wales World Cup squad in Sweden.

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"It would mean everything,” Darlow told the Football Association of Wales. “As a player it’s a dream to go to the World Cup. I know a few of the lads have done it here before and have spoke about their experiences and how incredible it was for them, and it’s something I want to look back on in my career and say that I’ve been to a World Cup. It’s a big target for myself and the group.”

Wales face Liechtenstein on June 6 at Cardiff City Stadium and then travel to Belgium on June 9. Darlow wants to replicate his unbeaten Leeds form with his country.

“The way that qualification works these two games in the summer are hugely important,” he said. “We’ve got Liechtenstein and then Belgium, which are big games for us, and we want to maximise the amount of points that we can get from those games. Like the manager says, we just go on to the next one, so Liechtenstein at home is the most important at the minute and that’s got our full focus. We played some good football in that game [against Kazakhstan], so to start our campaign with three points in front of our home fans was brilliant. We know there’s obviously a long way to go in qualification and we hope we get the same backing against Liechtenstein in the next one.”

Though Darlow's international breakthrough could have come earlier - he turned down call ups in 2013 and 2018 - he is fully embracing the chance to experience new things in what is now the twilight of his career. His family are fully invested, too.

“My parents have been down to the home games and I think my brother is planning on flying out to Belgium,” he said.“They’re massively proud and it’s something that I’m massively proud of as well to follow in the footsteps of what [my grandfather] has done and hopefully we can achieve World Cup qualification, like he did many years ago. It’s been brilliant, a brilliant experience for me.

“It’s been completely different to anything that I’ve experienced before. Coming into a group that was already a really good group, a really strong group, I just wanted to add to what we’ve already got here. The way they’ve been with me and the professionalism in terms of how the coaching staff is day in, day out in what we do, the intensity of work that we do, I’ve really enjoyed it and it’s something I’m really glad I’ve signed up to.”

Darlow’s perfect Leeds ending

Positive results in June would provide further cause for celebration at the end of a season that, like his national team career, kicked off in a big way late on. Darlow acted as Meslier's number two throughout the campaign until being called into action for the first time in the Championship in April. All the waiting and patience paid off eventually, in the best possible way.

"It was an incredible end to the season, a really long season,” he said. "We had a great string of results at the end that got us over the line, it went down to the last day for who was going to win the title, and thankfully we got over the line in the last minute. It was an incredible day and a great way to finish our season.”