It’s refreshing to know that not all football superstars have forgotten their roots.

During a week’s break in Gran Canaria, we decided to take in a “busman’s” trip and watch a game in the local fishing village.

Club Deportivo Arguineguin, to give them their grand title, are not one of Spanish football’s brightest lights.

Las Palmas, the Canarian capital, have appeared in the La Liga premier division from time to time. Arguineguin kick around in the regional inter-island competitions.

Our pidgin Spanish let us down about the quality of the match on offer. The local in the car park confirmed that the first team were indeed playing that night.

Unfortunately, they were away.

So the game we bowled up to enjoy turned out to be a veterans encounter, which included one player in luminous orange shorts, another in school gym pumps and a late substitute who was the spitting image of old man Steptoe. Only a bit older …

This was accompanied by the local barber shop choir at the bar, complete with guitarists, belting out their best Spanish ballads at top volume. They spent the entire 90 minutes (it was actually 35 for the first half and about 55 the second) with their backs to the action – and were clearly having a whale of a time.

But it was the assorted memorabilia proudly on display above the bar that caught my attention.

There, fighting for space with the various beers and the spirit bottles, were two signed football shirts – Spain and Manchester City. More amusingly, there was even a copy of the Man City 2011 annual. A must-have for all Canarian fisherman this Christmas.

These precious artefacts had all been hand delivered by Deportivo’s darling, David Silva.

Man City get a lot of flak for their so-called mercenary approach. Here is the healthy antidote.

The World Cup winner is the Canarian local boy made very good. He pops home regularly, eats with his old pals in the Thai restaurant up the street from the run-down Stadio Municipo and is having a luxury villa built in the neighbouring hills.

Arguineguin are rightly proud of Silva’s progress to the biggest stage. And it’s obvious – even to bemused foreign visitors – that he remains just as close to them.