Given how footballers, including Manchester United's players, often make the front pages as well as the back ones, here's a tale that won't make headlines.
Take this recent night out for midfielder Michael Carrick.
Along with his wife Lisa, the Carricks turned up at a local pub near Woodford in Cheshire for a 60th birthday party for Nev Jennings, a pub regular.
"They're lovely people, very down to earth," another guest told us in words which definitely won't be making any tabloid front pages. "They sat in the vault. Michael had a soft drink and Mrs. Carrick wore a very nice pair of trousers. The people in there like them for who they are, not what they do."
The headline writers would do well to get a story out of that one. Perhaps Carrick's wife "wearing the trousers" -- and you can imagine that after she took umbrage with Roy Keane on social media after he criticised her husband last year -- or going into a pub which prides itself on its beer and ordering a soft drink.
There's very little of the flash, big-time footballer about Carrick. This is a man who has no plans to be a manager and only drives a club-sponsored Corvette because his two children pushed him into it.
Carrick is as dependable on the pitch as off it. His best mate is Richard Garcia, a winger with whom he lived for four years while at West Ham, who now plays in Australia. Carrick and his wife are from Newcastle but have made the south of Manchester their home.
The couple met at school and are as popular in their community as Carrick is at United, where teammate Ander Herrera has praised his leadership by invoking an expression used by his former manager at Athletic Bilbao, Marcelo Bielsa:
"Carrick is very serious but he proves another Bielsa phrase: 'Leaders don't need to talk much, but they're listened to when they do speak," said Herrera recently.
However, wind back a few months and Carrick, who has made 377 United appearances since signing for £18.6 million from Tottenham in 2006, was getting nervous about his future with his current contract set to expire at the end of the current campaign.
Like several other anxious first teamers, Carrick had not been offered a new deal and was fearful that he would be heading out of the club, the same way many of his teammates did last summer, as United made another assault on the transfer market.
The club have made it policy to offer players aged over 30 -- Carrick turns 34 in July -- a one-year contract extension. It is a protocol that so irritated Patrice Evra last summer and led to the French defender's departure.
In Carrick's case, United's position was understandable. A star performer in the Premier League-winning 2012-13 season, he was one of many players whose form dipped last term. United fans were divided and wondered as to his future under Louis van Gaal, especially given the summer signing of Daley Blind.
Earlier this month, Carrick only had three months of his contract to run when he was offered a one-year extension, which he was delighted to sign. He also received an apology from Van Gaal that it hadn't been sorted sooner and it's understandable why that was the case.
An ankle injury kept Carrick out until the start of November but since then he's made more passes, more short passes and has a higher passing accuracy - 88 percent -- than any other player in the Premier League. His assist for Marouane Fellaini's goal against Tottenham on Mar. 15 -- a game in which he also scored -- was a reminder of his vision.
His first start back was against Crystal Palace and United have lost one game -- at home vs. Southampton in January -- with him on the pitch. United have won 71 percent of the games he's started this season and 44 percent of those he has not. Carrick is not a goalscorer nor a match-winner, but he's crucial to a team that wins matches.
Deeply appreciated by match-going fans who holler "it's Carrick, you know, hard to believe it's not [Paul] Scholes," he's currently showing form which might lead him to really let himself go and consider opening his car's sunroof one day this summer.
Carrick's revival has also seen him recalled to the England team, where he continues an odd international career which first saw him capped as a 19-year-old by Sven-Goran Eriksson in 2001. He's made just 31 international appearances since, perhaps largely because he's a Geordie and not from Girona, where Catalans value the No. 4 position as the most important in a team behind the centre-forward.
After being a non-playing member of the 2010 World Cup squad, Carrick spent Euro 2012 on a family holiday in the Caribbean, having told Roy Hodgson he did not want to be a bit-part player. He was recalled later that year after another national team tournament failure but would miss out on selection for the 2014 World Cup squad.
He'd been talented enough to play as a holding midfielder for Manchester United and started in three European Cup finals in four years -- opposite the not dissimilar Sergio Busquets in two -- but not for the permanently mediocre England.
However, with Jack Wilshere afflicted by injury and Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard retired from international football, Carrick was recalled and started Friday's 4-0 win over Lithuania, his first England appearance since October 2013. He performed as well as he has been doing for United and is set to feature again in Tuesday's friendly vs. Italy.
Carrick will be almost 35 by Euro 2016 but there's been no evidence of decline yet in his game and the tournament is only a year away. Besides, nobody is expecting him to run past players when he can pass past them.
Van Gaal, who has nightmares at the prospect of players running with a football, has called Carrick his "second captain" and admires his simplicity and range of passing and the balance he brings to the side.
The man known as "Carras" to teammates admires his manager too and claims he's learned from his Dutch master, especially when playing in a defensive unit.
It used to be said of United's 1960s midfielder Paddy Crerand that, "when Crerand play, United play". The same could now be said about Michael Carrick.