New Zealand's Tim Payne soars from 5,000 to 5.7 million Instagram followers after 'least known' World Cup jibe

Tim Payne arrived at the 2026 FIFA World Cup as, by one measure, its most anonymous participant. He leaves the group stage as one of its most talked-about figures — not for anything that happened on the pitch, but because of a viral moment that turned a throwaway social media comment into a global story.

The sequence began in late May when Argentinian social media personality “El Scarso” set out to find the player with the fewest Instagram followers across all 48 World Cup squads. After trawling every squad list, he landed on New Zealand defender Tim Payne, who had fewer than 5,000 followers at the time. “He really is the least known. He doesn’t even have 5,000 followers!” El Scarso declared in a video that quickly spread far beyond his own audience.

The reaction was swift and, for Payne, transformative. Millions of football fans, apparently treating the label as a challenge, followed the 32-year-old Auckland native en masse. His Instagram count climbed past five million within days and sat at 5.7 million as of Monday — a figure that dwarfs the followings of most professional footballers outside the sport’s elite.

Payne responded with characteristic good humour. “It’s been a crazy 48 hours, to say the least,” he wrote in an early Instagram post. “I just wanted to also express that I’m very grateful.” The two men subsequently met in person during June, with Payne gifting El Scarso a New Zealand kit. “The past week has been a crazy ride, but thanks to @elscarso for everything he has done for myself, my family and NZ football,” Payne wrote after the meeting. “Great meeting you in person today mate.”

El Scarso has since said his original search was motivated by a desire to “unite” fans around a single player rather than to mock anyone — and the outcome has arguably done exactly that.

On the field, Payne is a seasoned international rather than an unknown quantity. He earned his first senior cap for the All Whites in 2012 and has accumulated 52 appearances for his country, scoring three goals. His most recent came in a 7-0 World Cup qualifying rout of Fiji, a game in which he also contributed three assists. New Zealand open their Group G campaign against Iran on Monday.

At club level, Payne has been a fixture at Wellington Phoenix in Australia’s A-League Men since 2019, making 143 appearances and scoring four goals. He is contracted to the club through the 2027-28 season. Before joining Wellington, he played for Eastern Suburbs AFC in New Zealand’s Northern League between 2016 and 2019, with a brief stint in the Portland Timbers’ reserve setup in 2015-16.

For context, Payne’s 5.7 million followers remain a long way behind the sport’s social media giants — Cristiano Ronaldo leads all footballers on Instagram with 666 million followers, while Lionel Messi has 506 million. But for a defender from Wellington who was virtually invisible online a month ago, the number represents one of the more unlikely stories of this World Cup.