HE has a supermodel girlfriend, drives a Ferrari and a Bentley and thinks he is better looking than Cristiano Ronaldo.

So far so conventional for one of the stars of this season’s Premier League campaign.

Yet Graziano Pellè is miles away from our stereotypical multi-millionaire international footballer.

He is moved to tears by films and the memory of a myna bird he once kept as a pet, loves Oscar Wilde and is a former dancing champion.

An imposing 6ft 4in, the Italian has certainly made his mark on Saints fans with 12 goals – including that scissor kick goal-of-the-season contender against Queens Park Rangers – since his £8.8m summer move to the south coast.

His form helped earn him a first international call-up – followed by a debut goal that made him as much a hero in his own country as he is in Southampton.

However, despite the fact he makes no secrets that self-confidence is his greatest quality, the self-confessed highly-strung striker has a much softer side than most would imagine.

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Graziano is a romantic, who perhaps surprisingly most admires Irish writer and poet Oscar Wilde, once lavished his girlfriend he met on Facebook with 100 roses, would most like spend his last day on earth with his father Roberto, and admits to crying his eyes out over his beloved pet bird Calimero.

“I’m very sensitive,” he says.

“Those who know me know I am anything but arrogant.

“I’m at my happiest every day when I wake up and realise that I am alive. I find life so beautiful. I hope there is still a long time to enjoy it.

“I always say enjoy every second of life as every second can pass so quickly.”

Growing up in a three-storey house his grandfather Pippi built for the entire family in San Cesario di Lecce, the heel of Italy, made Graziano learn to appreciate life’s simple pleasures – family and football.

Everything from windows to vases and bowls fell victim to his famous right foot according to dad Roberto as he practised his ball skills around the clock.

And he learned the hard way. He was forced to keep his balance while handling the ball as a kid because the poor region did not boast turfed pitches, only gravel that would rip through his skin if he fell.

Graziano was born in July 1985 and emerged through the youth ranks at his local Serie A club, Lecce, but was loaned out to Catania, Crotone, and Cesena.

Lecce wanted to send him on another loan but he had grown tired of being farmed out.

With his career in danger of stagnating, Graziano decided to move abroad and took up an offer from AZ Alkmaar in the Netherlands managed at the time by current Manchester United boss Louis van Gaal.

It was there that he first made contact with Saints boss Ronald Koeman.

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A return to Italy and Parma followed in 2011, but Graziano found himself loaned out again to Sampdoria. Then, in 2012, he returned to the Netherlands to play for Feyenoord, where he linked up with Koeman once more.

In the first nine seasons of his career, Graziano only scored 38 goals in a total of 200 appearances for seven clubs in both Italy and the Netherlands.

It was a little over two years ago that everything clicked into place and launched the centre forward’s career.

Suddenly, he started scoring goals – 55 in 66 appearances at Feyenoord – and has not looked back since.

Since following Koeman to St Mary’s in the summer, Graziano has adapted quickly to the pace of the Premier League thanks to the nifty footwork that made him Italy’s Latin American dance champion at the age of 11.

His form is one of the reasons Saints fans were able to forget the doomsday talk that accompanied the player exodus over the summer.

Couple this with his call-up to the Azzurri team by Italy manager Antonio Conte, where he scored the winner against Malta, and it is fair to say that Graziano is living his childhood dreams, with his Hungarian model girlfriend, Viktória Varga, by his side.

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In that thoroughly modern way, he met her on Facebook and knew instantly he wanted to get to know her better.

“I barely knew her but something inside me said that she was the one for me,” he wrote in his book published in Holland, Pelle spreekt: 1,000 questions and more.

There was one problem though – he didn’t know where Viktoria lived and she kept ignoring his messages.

After vowing to give her 100 roses when he saw her, she eventually gave him just one clue that she was in Gyor, Hungary, only adding: “If you are as clever as you think you are, you can find me.”

He was so smitten he booked a plane ticket and sent her a selfie of himself at Budapest airport. However when he got to Gyor, his phone was so low on battery but he was only able to send her the name of the hotel where he was staying.

In the book he writes: “Then she came. Beautiful! We talked all afternoon and eventually she gave me her address so I could send her the 100 roses.”

Though Viktoria’s mother saw a photo and told her “that guy is going to break your heart”, the pair are still together two-and-a-half years later and Graziano celebrates each monthly anniversary with a romantic gesture which the model often shares with her followers on her social networking site.

Graziano describes his upbringing as “perfect” and he’s always respected his parents – even though it was his father who made him cry the most.

He says finding out his talkative 19- year-old pet myna bird who could imitate different voices had died and was placed in the bin by his dad, rather than being buried, devastated him.

“That bird was like a brother to me. My heart broke and I had to cry again,” he describes in his book.

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Graziano also admits there isn’t a dry eye in his house when he watches a moving film with his girlfriend, like his favourite La Vita e Bella, which is set in a Second World War concentration camp.

As a boy, he danced with his sister to be crowned national under-12s champions.

The Pelles used to go dancing every weekend, which helped the young footballer develop skills for the pitch.

“My sister wanted to dance and so after a day of football, I’d change and even have to put heels on because my sister was taller than me at the time! I was pretty good because I was physically strong and then I won champion for all kinds of disciplines,” he reveals in his book.

“It helped me with football because it gave me a lot of co-ordination and rhythm.

“At one point I had to choose between a career as a football player and a professional ballroom dancer. Well, that was not difficult.”

However it wasn’t just his sister who was swept off her feet.

Graziano admits growing up, he was a ‘playboy’ but one, he says, whose “bark was louder than his bite”.

The Italian international says he regards women as the most beautiful creations on earth but says he has had fewer relationships than people suspect.

“Previously I was a playboy,” he says. “One that talked a lot but never really did anything. I was popular with the women, flirted a lot, lots of chances, but it always stayed with talking. A bit like how I played as a forward, a lot of chances but never scoring,” he jokes.

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His first kiss was on his 12th birthday with a girl called Lara and he recalls losing his virginity aged 17 with a Moroccan girl whose phone number he still remembers off by heart. He had a six-year relationship with an older woman who he said broke his heart before asking him to marry her, which he turned down.

For Graziano though, love goes hand in hand with family.

“Take my father and mother,” he says in his book. “I love them but tell them too little. What if suddenly the day comes when they are not there?

“I’ve recently written a letter to my mother where I said how wonderful she is and how much I love her.

“Money makes everything easy but you cannot buy love with it. Love is special and is for everyone. Even the poorest people on earth receive and give love, sometimes so much that they forget the terrible situation they are in. This is what love does.”