\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t New Zealand footballer Tim Payne may have been one of the least-known players at the 2026 World Cup, but he has unexpectedly become one of the tournament\u2019s breakout stars after an Argentine influencer helped him go viral.<\/p>\n
Valen Scarsini, a young Argentine content creator focused on football, sent his followers on a mission: \u201cWhat if we make the least-known player the protagonist of the World Cup?\u201d<\/p>\n
In a video posted to Instagram and TikTok on Tuesday, Scarsini said he wanted to find a player that would \u201cunite everyone\u201d beyond nationalities.<\/p>\n
With this goal, he looked up the Instagram following count of all players that will take part in the World Cup until he found the one with the least followers.<\/p>\n
Before Scarsini\u2019s video, Payne had just 4,715 followers. Just three days later, his follower count skyrocketed to 1.7 million, and his posts gathered thousands of likes and comments.<\/p>\n
A star is born Tim Payne will play in the World Cup that starts in June as a defender of New Zealand\u2019s national team, the All Whites. He is currently part of Australia\u2019s A-League team Wellington Phoenix.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has a very difficult task: helping New Zealand win its first World Cup match,\u201d Scarsini told his large following on TikTok and Instagram.<\/p>\n
He called users to start following Payne on Instagram, liking and commenting on his posts, posing with his World Cup collectible sticker, and talking about Payne \u201ceverywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to make videos feeding on the legend of Tim Payne. The goal is to see how many people are talking about him before the tournament begins,\u201d he said, about the June 11 start.<\/p>\n
Payne said he was happily shocked to see the sudden wave of support and posted a video thanking everyone, speaking in Spanish.<\/p>\n
\u201cHello everyone, thank you so much for the support. Excuse my Spanish, I\u2019m still practicing on Duolingo,\u201d the player said, speaking with a strong accent in Spanish, in the video posted on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Switching to English, he also sent a \u201cmassive thank you\u201d to Scarsini. \u201cIt\u2019s been a pretty crazy 48 hours to say the least,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just wanted to also express that I\u2019m very grateful to be representing my country at this World Cup, and I appreciate all the love from all around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Football fever Argentine football fans are known for being very passionate, and online behavior is not the exception. The attention even led to Payne and Scarsini getting comments from Duolingo and brands like KFC and McDonald\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Just hours into the craze, Scarsini shared that he had shared private messages with Payne, who didn\u2019t know why his socials were \u201cblowing up\u201d until he saw the video. \u201cThis got out of control!,\u201d the influencer admitted.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, Scarsini celebrated that \u201cTim Payne is already a legend\u201d and that Argentine clothing stores are selling T-shirts of the defender.<\/p>\n
Payne\u2019s thousands of new fans will see him play in New Zealand\u2019s first World Cup match on June 15, when they will face Iran. The team will also play friendly matches against Haiti and England next week.<\/p>\n
You may also be interested in: Here\u2019s Argentina\u2019s path to repeat its World Cup victory in 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New Zealand footballer Tim Payne may have been one of the least-known players at the 2026 World Cup, but he has unexpectedly become one of the tournament\u2019s breakout stars after an Argentine influencer helped him go viral. Valen Scarsini, a young Argentine content creator focused on football, sent his followers on a mission: \u201cWhat if […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":69468,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5063,66,67,17980,339],"tags":[5307,1368,1369,17979,3576],"class_list":["post-69467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-2026-world-cup","category-football","category-sports","category-tim-payne","category-world-cup-2026","tag-2026-world-cup","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-tim-payne","tag-world-cup-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}