From 4,000 to 4.3m followers: New Zealand player’s Insta fame
New Zealand footballer Tim Payne talked about in the same breath as Messi, Maradona
Portugal superstar Cristiano Ronaldo has 665 million Instagram followers. Argentine genius Lionel Messi has 506 million followers on Insta. Even the late Argentine icon Diego Maradona’s page has 7.9 million followers. But what has catapulted New Zealand’s World Cup-bound footballer Tim Payne to celebrity status is not how many followers he has on Instagram, it is how few.
Till his call-up to the 26-man squad bound for the United States, Canada and Mexico World Cup, Payne had just 4,000 Instagram followers. Then, an influencer picked him out as the "least known" player at the World Cup and the rest as they say, is history.
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After Argentine social media giant Valen Scarsini, known as "El Scarso", last week called for his fans to boost unheralded Payne's following, it kicked off an online explosion of interest, so much so that the online fan club of the Wellington Phoenix right-back has now soared to 4.3 million on Tuesday, more than even the All Blacks.
Tongue-in-cheek online comments have been comparing Payne to the greatest players from three-time World Cup champions Argentina.
"Messi, Maradona, Tim," said one of more than 66,000 comments on Payne's latest post, many of them in Spanish, which also received 2.1 million likes.
But New Zealand's coach said the unexpected fame won't go to Payne’s head.
"At the moment I do feel like he's dealing with it really well, probably better than maybe some others would have," Darren Bazeley told stuff.co.nz.
Payne, 32, who described the attention as "pretty crazy", could now be set to meet Scarsini.
The Argentine said he would travel to Florida to watch New Zealand's warm-up match against Haiti in Fort Lauderdale later on Tuesday.
"Guys tomorrow is the day," Scarsini posted on Monday.
"Let's go watch Tim's game v Haiti and then we're going to meet him! Thanks to all who made it possible."
Payne's new celebrity status means he now has a million more followers than the rugby-obsessed country's All Blacks.
It has been the talk of the New Zealand squad's World Cup training camp in Florida.
"The players talk about it. I can hear the banter they're having with Tim, and I think it's amazing," said Bazeley.
"Putting Tim up on a pedestal like that was really cool and probably not something that he, or anyone, expected," he added.
"I don't know where it ends or where it leads to – or what that world really involves. I try to stay off that, as most coaches do."
Another million or so would see Payne have as many followers as the population of New Zealand, which is around 5.3 million.
The All Whites are the lowest-ranked team at the World Cup.
