Source :- THE AGE NEWS
Pasadena: Until just a few days ago, the thing that Tim Payne was most famous for was his shirtless, alcohol-fuelled joyride through Sydney’s northern beaches … in a golf cart.
This was in the first wave of COVID-19, in March 2020, when his club, Wellington Phoenix, were supposed to be self-isolating at the Sydney Academy of Sport in Narrabeen. Instead, he was “drunk as a lord”, in the words of the magistrate who disqualified him from driving in NSW for six months.
Just wait until his new followers find out about that.
Payne has a lot of new followers. Two million of them, to be precise, and counting – from a base of 4500 on Instagram. The sudden growth has been sparked by an Argentinian influencer, who has turned him into one of the most talked-about players in the game. Seriously.
It all started on Tuesday, when Valen Scarsini, a digital creator from Argentina, embarked on a search for the World Cup’s “least-known footballer” in an effort to “find a player that united us all… regardless of nationality”.
Somehow, he settled on Payne, the 32-year-old right back who plays for the Phoenix and the New Zealand national team, for whom he has been capped 50 times.
Scarsini seems to have found his target based on Payne’s modest Instagram presence, urging his own followers – all 1.6 million of them – to get behind the unfashionable Kiwi stalwart.
“We have to start mentioning Tim Payne everywhere… we have to make videos feeding the legend of Tim Payne. We have to get Tim Payne on everyone’s lips,” he said. “The goal before the World Cup is to see how many people know Tim Payne before the Cup starts.”
Well, mission accomplished. Official accounts of various brands – including the All Blacks, and the FIFA World Cup itself – are on the bandwagon. One new Tim Payne fanatic has even come up with a tribute song.
It’s a textbook example of the power of social media, and in particular, the incredible influence wielded by those with big accounts.
Payne’s head is still spinning. “One afternoon, I just started getting a few random notifications,” he explained in a video posted by New Zealand Football.
“Then I looked on my Instagram and noticed that someone had tagged me in a video, and it was obviously in Spanish … my Spanish isn’t very great, so I passed it on to my missus, who is fluent in Spanish and was able to let me know what it was saying.
“By the time I woke it up the next morning, here was hundreds of thousands of followers so yeah, it’s pretty crazy. Probably as everyone can tell, I’m not massive on social media, so for that to happen is a bit strange for me.
“At the same time I’m trying to embrace it all … and have a bit of a laugh and a bit of banter with it. I think it’s come from a cool place in terms of how positive it’s been. Probably this time last week I was quietly coming into camp preparing for a World Cup, and now I’ve got millions of people from multiple countries following my Instagram and my journey and New Zealand football’s journey as a whole.
“I hope that we as a team and a nation can make all those people proud and have something for them to cheer.”
