‘Forget Project Mbappe, bring my son to the pub and start Project Littler’: Parents swap hilarious memes on social media ahead of Luke the Nuke’s World Championship final

Parents are swapping hilarious memes on social media ahead of Luke the Nuke’s World Championship final darts match tonight as they make plans to turn their children into superstars while spending all day in the pub.

Football fans are forgetting ‘Project Mbappe’ and planning on hanging up the boots for the dartboard instead as they enjoy the prospect of drinking pints in a cozy boozer instead of standing in the freezing cold and rain.

It follows the viral Project Mbappe meme which saw parents pledge to impose tough training sessions on their youngsters in a bid to encourage their meteoric rise to stardom after Kylian Mbappe won the football World Cup.

Titan player Luke Littler, 16, has become the youngest player to ever make it to the final of the PDC World Darts Championship after beating Rob Cross 6-2 in last night’s semi-final.

Ahead of his final showdown against Luke Humphries, who thrashed his own opponent to come out on top 6-0 to become the new world number one, parents of young sports fans are realising darts could be the perfect spectator sport. 

One father said: ‘f*** project Mbappe that’s too much effort. I’m staying in the pub and doing project Luke Littler’.

A second said: ‘Project Luke Littler sounds like an excuse to just get p***ed up in a pub all day watch your son play darts, sounds like a good time to me’.

And a third added: ‘Project Mbappe is on hold… Bring my son to the pub and start Project Littler’. 

Littler has taken the sporting world by storm the past week after blindsiding famous darts players to race through to the final.

His own father, former cab driver Anthony Buckley, convinced his son to hang up his football boots at just nine years old to focus on darts instead. 

He told the Times: ‘I said to him at nine, hang your boots up. Concentrate on darts. You can still play football here and there.

‘But if there’s a darts comp on at the weekends, go to darts first. Make that your priority because I thought he could make it at darts – and he has done.’

Now parents around the UK are plotting similar career trajectories for their own children. 

Ahead of today’s match the 16-year-old plans to have a ham and cheese omelette for breakfast, and pizza for lunch before taking on the biggest match of his career.

He has already secured a £200,000 prize pot by making the final, which could rise to half a million if he comes out on top at Alexandra Palace. 

Littler recalls picking up his first set of magnetic darts when he still in nappies, before starting playing on a small board with real arrows aged just four

Luke Littler has a solid support network around him as he pursues record-breaking world championship glory

Luke Littler (left) met Luke Humphries (right) in the Hayling Island quarter-final in November 2019. The pair face off in the World Darts Championship final tonight

His rapid ascension to fame has attracted some famous admirers, including Tottenham Hotspur midfielder James Maddison, who invited him to a match on New Year’s Eve (pictured)

His opponent Humphries, who has played the youngster in the past when Little was just 12, has admitted he will ‘probably have to play the game of my life’ in order to see off the challenger, who has set the darts world ablaze with his skill and his humility in equal measure. 

For Littler, whose unflappable game has seen off opponents with a lifetime’s worth of experience, it could be business as usual.

He told Sky Sports: ‘I’ve just settled on that stage (in darts). It takes myself a few legs to settle into a game but once I find that rhythm I’m good to go.’

Asked how he will keep his cool in tonight’s final, he added: ‘I’ve just got to stay focused throughout the game no matter how long it goes on for.

‘(In the final, I’ll do) what I’ve been doing – in the morning, go for my ham and cheese omelette. Come in here, have my pizza, then I’m on the board, that’s what I’ve done every day.’

On his journey to the top, the reigning junior and world youth champion has acquired hundreds of thousands of fans who admire his honest love for kebabs as much as his skill for notching up 180 after 180.

He has shrugged off greats like former world champ Rob Cross, Brendan Dolan, Raymond van Barneveld and Andrew Gilding since the championship began last month.

Not even an early wobble against Cross in Tuesday night’s best-of-11 could stop him from fighting back with three consecutive set wins. Cross claimed the fifth set – before Littler took the next three, sealing his route to the final 6-2.

His new legion of fans are gearing up for another evening of cheering on the teenager on Wednesday, with the final set to kick off at 7.30pm.