Fifa World Cup: All White Tim Payne on viral fame, avoiding distractions and England clash
Unheralded All Whites defender Tim Payne has been one of the biggest football stories of the past week, as his global fame has rocketed thanks to a viral social media campaign, first kicked off by Argentinean influencer Valen Scarsini. The 32-year-old now has more than five million Instagram followers – and counting – and has made headlines across the globe. After a crazy period, Payne fronted for his first media interview on Saturday, with the travelling New Zealand press pack in Tampa.
Tim Payne was in his hotel room in Miami just over a week ago when he first noticed something was a bit unusual on his phone. As he relaxed after a hard training session at the All Whites pre-World Cup camp on May 28, messages flooded into his Instagram account. Given he was a minimal social media user, it was hard to work out.
“I was just sat there with [roommate] Alex Rufer and I noticed quite a few more notifications coming through on Instagram at the time,” Payne explains. “And I was like, what’s going on here? I mentioned something to Alex and I think it was hundreds coming in at the time. Then I remember waking up the next morning and it was thousands and so my phone had just completely blown up. Obviously I’d been tagged in that post from Valen and it just all continued on from there.”
That was the start of a crazy saga, though Payne didn’t fully comprehend it at the time. From a base of 2500 followers – where he had been identified as the “least-known player” at the tournament by Argentinean influencer Valen Scarsini – he soon had 50,000 followers. Then 100,000. Then he topped 150,000. At the same time, Payne jokes, his phone had become almost unusable, as it was so clogged with incoming messages and notifications.
“Yeah, so on Instagram, when you get notifications, it has like 100 comments, 100 likes and 100 followers and that just kept popping up,” Payne explains. “So if I went into the like section it just keeps refreshing. So, in theory I kind of couldn’t [use it] ... but my phone was still operational in terms of being able to message my partner and family and things like that.”
Things have only exploded since then, as the viral news and messaging has become self perpetuating, compounding each day. He passed one million followers, then two million. Payne esclipsed the official All Blacks account (2.8 million) but still there was more. Four million felt like the peak before his accumulated following passed five million just over a day ago. Now, of course, Payne has his notifications turned off and out of sight, a small buffer from the madness.
“Otherwise it just would just keep flooding in,” Payne says. “It’s one of those things. I don’t try and go on it too much, I just message the people that are important to me [but] that obviously keeps popping off.”
Whatever way you look at things, it’s hard to comprehend. Before this saga, Payne was barely even famous in New Zealand football. He has been on the international scene since 2012 – and has had plenty of ups and downs since he first got a chance at Blackburn Rovers as a teenager – at one point going back to part-time football for the best part of five years before he joined the Phoenix in 2019. He is a respected, hard working, versatile professional but isn’t someone who grabs the headlines.
That’s what has made the episode even more surreal. As the Herald reported yesterday, New Zealand Football (NZF) has had more than 400 overseas interview requests – including massive outlets like CNN, USA Today, the Guardian, the BBC and the Times. NZF choose to turn everything down – partly at Payne’s behest – given his desire to focus on World Cup preparations.
Even Saturday’s media opportunity with the small New Zealand contingent had to be a touch clandestine, done out of sight of the international journalists (mainly English and American) who were at Raymond Jones stadium for the All Whites training session and press conference, ahead of tomorrow’s clash with England (8am). Given all the attention – an American media analytics company calculated that Payne had been mentioned in more than 950 headline news articles over the past week, a greater tally than the likes of Kylian Mbappe, Harry Kane, Jude Bellingham and Bruno Fernandes – the kid from South Auckland is taking it well.
“It’s pretty surreal,” Payne says. “Obviously I’ve talked about it a little bit in terms of just trying to process the moment. It’s probably a beautiful thing that it’s happening during this time period of the World Cup. My full focus is still football and training every single day but it’s a positive thing on the whole for myself and New Zealand football.
“Valen was trying to grow New Zealand football, grow myself, grow the game, and so I just look at it as a massive positive on the whole.”
Payne is now the second-most-followed Kiwi athlete on Instagram – only behind UFC exponent Israel Adesanya (8.3 million) – and is attracting international interest from brands, football clubs and high-profile personalities who want to get involved in his story. But he isn’t putting any energy into that.
“I know there is lots going on, but my full focus is [football],” Payne says. “I’ve got England who are number four in the world to go and perform against so that’s where my head’s at. That’s what I’m worried about and that’s my next course of action.”
He hasn’t made any plans to capitalise on his new-found fame – commercially or otherwise – parking all that until the end of the campaign. In fact, after talking with Payne, you realise he is still the same regular guy those in football have known for years, just an unassuming Kiwi bloke who loves the sport and wants to make the best of his abilities.
“That’s probably the whole reason behind Valen’s original post,” Payne says. “It’s just someone whose trying to ply his the trade and all the hard work and everything that’s gone before it to lead to this point in time.
But look, I don’t change who I am. The Instagram [stuff] is obviously a fantastic thing in terms of it’s very positive and everything at the moment.
But I’m still the same person. I still go out here and work as hard as I can every single time I step onto the football pitch and I try and perform the best for our country.”
Michael Burgess has been a Sports Journalist for the New Zealand Herald since 2005, covering the Olympics, Fifa World Cups, and America’s Cup campaigns. He is a co-host of the Big League podcast.
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