Despite being amongst the stars, he has his feet firmly on the ground

Footballer’s reputations tend to precede them.

You hear a million stories about their lavish spending, the recent court case with Stuart Downing’s and his agent that tried to defraud his bank account was a real eye opener in that showed the spending habits of football players.

“As well as the home cinema, he spent £30,000 on a home extension, £6,000 on a walk-in wardrobe and £45,000 on a conservatory.” The Mirror reported last week and whilst he has every right to spend every penny of the money he has worked so hard to earn, it is unlikely that any of us are able to spend so extravagantly!

I’m sure we have all heard of the life sized marble statue that Nani has of himself in his Wilmslow mansion, doesn’t sound like the best investment but yesterday the News of The World gave us an insight into the Portuguese wingers life that shows despite his extravagances he is just like everyone else!

His girlfriend Daniella Martins gave us an insight into his life and spending habits claiming,

“We both come from humble beginnings in Portugal and know what it’s like to struggle.

“We often say to each other, ‘Don’t spend too much, be careful!’ We’re aware that we could go back to nothing.

“When I go shopping at Tesco I look for bargains. Nani loves Müller Crunch Corners and I get them when they’re on special offer. You can get six in a deal for £2.96. I’d never buy just four because you can’t save money that way.

“And Nani loves Krispy Kreme doughnuts so I buy the big box because we save doing that.

“We shop in Ikea for furniture and I get clothes in Primark.”

There is no doubting that Nani too likes to splash his cash like other footballers (Daniela confirms so later on in the interview) but his approach is somewhat refreshing and acts as a great foil to the stories you hear about footballers (Jermiane Pennant and his Porsche for example!) and shows, as Rio explained last week in his interview with the club’s official site, footballers can be a lot more grounded than we assume.