"I know exactly what it means to wear these stripes," Tim Payne said when he launched the auction. Turns out, so do a few thousand other people — bidding has pushed his Club Olimpia debut shirt past 21 million guaraní, the equivalent of roughly NZ$6,000.
For a 32-year-old New Zealand defender who had fewer than 5,000 Instagram followers eight months ago, that's a number worth sitting with for a moment.
How a defender from Wellington ended up here
The short version: Argentine influencer Valen Scarsini — El Scarso to his 2 million followers — decided before last year's World Cup to find the tournament's least-known player. He landed on Payne, a 54-cap All White who had spent the bulk of his career making nearly 150 appearances for the Wellington Phoenix. Scarsini urged his audience to adopt Payne as their "World Cup hero." Within days, Payne's support base had surpassed 5 million. El Scarso flew to Florida just to meet him at the All Whites' training camp.
The story went global. And then something unusual happened — it didn't stop there.
Payne left the Phoenix and signed with Club Olimpia in Paraguay. On his debut, coming off the bench against Rubio Ñu, he scored. Not a tap-in. A proper goal, in a win, in front of a new fanbase that had been primed to love him before he'd kicked a ball in their colours.
What the auction actually says
The shirt going for this kind of money isn't really about football memorabilia markets. It's about what happens when a genuinely likeable underdog story lands in the right hands online. Payne didn't manufacture any of this — and that's exactly why it worked.
Olimpia clearly understand what they have. Putting the debut shirt to auction was a smart move: it generates revenue, deepens fan connection, and keeps Payne's name circulating across platforms that extend well beyond Paraguay's football ecosystem.
Whether Payne becomes a genuine fixture in the Olimpia squad or a cult figure who fades into the background over the next few months is the real open question. The debut goal bought him goodwill. Sustaining it in a new league, at 32, is the harder part.
For now though, his shirt is selling for NZ$6,000. Wild sentence to write about a Wellington Phoenix defender.
