Larry, The Downing Street Cat - Meet the World Cup's Most Famous Player Nobody Knew

As chief sports reporter for CNN, I have been dispatched to cover the forthcoming World Cup, a tournament devoted to a sport known, rather optimistically, as "the Beautiful Game". Why it is called that remains one of life's enduring mysteries. From my limited observations, it consists largely of grown men jogging about a field for ninety minutes before collapsing theatrically and consulting something called VAR every five minutes. My own experience of football is limited to the occasional glimpse of Arsenal, the team loyally supported by my manservant, on the goggle box. Whenever I happen upon a match, there always seems to be a crowd of earnest commentators discussing offside decisions with the intensity normally reserved for nuclear disarmament talks. Still, every World Cup produces a story that transcends the game itself, and this year's favourite comes from New Zealand. A defender called Tim Payne has somehow become one of the biggest stars of the tournament before kicking a single ball. The extraordinary chain of events began when an Argentine football influencer, Valen Scarsini, better known online as El Scarso, discovered that Payne had fewer than 5,000 followers on Instagram. Sensing an opportunity for mischief, he encouraged his followers to transform Payne into the tournament's ultimate cult hero by making him the most famous unknown footballer on Earth. The internet, as it occasionally does when not arguing with itself, embraced the challenge. Payne's following exploded from around 4,700 followers to more than 5.4 million in under two weeks. To put that into perspective, more people now follow Tim Payne on Instagram than actually live in New Zealand. He has become the third most-followed athlete in Kiwi history, which is a sentence nobody, least of all Tim Payne, could possibly have expected to read a fortnight ago. It is all gloriously absurd. Who needs Lionel Messi and the rest of football's glittering superstars when you can have a defender from New Zealand accidentally becoming an internet phenomenon? The 32-year-old has played 50 times for his country and is expected to feature in New Zealand's opening match against Iran on 16th June. Will I be watching? Almost certainly not. By then, I shall most likely be enjoying forty winks on my favourite cushion, which, unlike VAR, has never once interrupted itself to check whether it made the right decision. #cats #pets #animals #cutcats