{"id":450762,"date":"2026-05-29T08:05:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T08:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/450762\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T08:05:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T08:05:12","slug":"all-whites-defender-surprised-by-argentinian-influencers-social-media-boost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/450762\/","title":{"rendered":"All Whites defender surprised by Argentinian influencer’s social media boost"},"content":{"rendered":"

A World Cup-bound All Whites footballer’s Instagram profile is growing at an incredible rate, following an Argentinian influencer’s call to make something of what he called the World Cup’s “least-known player”.<\/p>\n

Valen Scarsini claimed after analysing all the players in each squad, that New Zealander Tim Payne’s 4700-strong Instagram count needed a boost.<\/p>\n

Speaking in Spanish to his millions of followers on TikTok and Instagram, Scarsini urged them to make Payne a World Cup hero.<\/p>\n

“Tim Payne is a defender and has a very difficult task: help New Zealand win their first World Cup match. They have never won one.<\/p>\n

“Explode his posts with likes and comments. We need to start naming Tim Payne everywhere.<\/p>\n

“You have to make videos feeding the legend of Tim Payne. If you have the World Cup album, upload a photo with your sticker.”<\/p>\n

Scarsini’s call has seen Payne’s Instagram profile amass followers at an alarming rate. Early Friday morning, Payne’s follower count was rising at 1000 a minute, and was on track to break the 1 million mark that day.<\/p>\n

Payne’s last post was in March, when he played his 50th game for New Zealand in a FIFA World Series match. The post has now been viewed more than 500,000 times and attracted nearly 70,000 comments.<\/p>\n

\"Tim<\/p>\n

Tim Payne. (Source: Getty)<\/p>\n

Scarsini has since revealed that Payne has been in touch to thank him.<\/p>\n

“Was wondering why my socials were blowing up and found your post, man,” wrote Payne.<\/p>\n

Rnz.co.nz<\/a><\/p>\n

The morning’s headlines in 90 seconds, including Dame Lynda Topp slams the budget, new MAFS allegations, and the All White who\u2019s going viral. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A World Cup-bound All Whites footballer’s Instagram profile is growing at an incredible rate, following an Argentinian influencer’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":450763,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[2965,28708,111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-450762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-all-whites","tag-central-south-america","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=450762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/450763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=450762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=450762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=450762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}