A few days ago, Tim Payne was a footballer little known beyond his native New Zealand, where he had recently been selected for their World Cup squad.Aside from two spells outside his home country, in England with Blackburn Rovers where he didn’t make a senior appearance, and in the U.S. at Portland Timbers’ reserve team, it is safe to say the 32-year-old utility player was not a globally recognised name. Not anymore.Thanks to a football influencer in Argentina, Payne, who plays for Wellington Phoenix in the Australian A-League, has gone from having less than 5,000 followers on Instagram to 1.8million and counting, and with it an extraordinary taste of overnight viral fame.What exactly happened, then?It all started when the digital creator and football influencer Valen Scarsini decided to find what he called the World Cup’s “least-known footballer” in order to, as he said, “find a player that united us all… regardless of nationality”.That quest led him to Payne, who, according to his analysis, was the biggest underdog, a claim based seemingly on Instagram followers and ‘likes’ of his picture training for the national team.Then Scarsini, who also goes by the online name Scarso, used Instagram, TikTok and YouTube to encourage his army of 1.6m followers across all three to: “Blast his (Payne’s) post with likes and comments”.Tim Payne has 50 caps for New Zealand and is part of his country’s squad for the 2026 World Cup (Photo by Andy Jackson/Getty Images)He continued: “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.“The goal before the World Cup is to see how many people know Tim Payne before the Cup starts. We have to build a good fanbase to cheer for him. I have faith they (New Zealand) can go through [from their qualifying group G].”Then he added: “See you tomorrow to see how the story continues.”Scarso posted the video again, this time in Spanish, and let the internet (and his algorithm heft) do the rest.