German soccer fan Freddy finds fame on World Cup trip, meeting celebs and snagging a White House invite. Next up: Boston.
His weekslong road trip kicked off in Atlanta. Freddy, as the soccer fan calls himself online, said he flew in from Germany with a couple of friends in early June with at least seven tickets to World Cup matches in hand.
He had no idea what would come next.
While traveling to games, Freddy began documenting his wide-eyed fascination with small-town America on social media. He feasted on cheesy hash browns at a Waffle House in Georgia and marveled at the size of a Buc-ee’s in Alabama. He was dumbstruck that a Bass Pro Shopswas home to a shooting range and awed by the scenery of each state.
“The vibes are insane,” he posted on X while driving through Louisiana. “It’s crazy how diverse this country is.”
Within days, Freddy had become an internet phenomenon, his posts captivating an American audience that was seeing the country anew through his eyes. His follower count ballooned,hovering around 743,000 on X. Now Freddy says he’s headed to Boston to see Germany play on Monday.
Adding to the intrigue: Freddy’s identity is unknown to all but a few. He routinely obscures his face in photos with a picture of soccer legendCristiano Ronaldo, of whom he appears to be a massive fan. That anonymity, coupled with his deft brand promotion and meteoric rise on social media, has left some doubting that Freddy is simply the lucky German fan he claims to be.
Indeed, Freddy’s newfound stardom has quickly caught the attention of celebrities, corporations, and politicians. First, he and his friends got a private tour of the New Orleans Saints and Pelicans facilities. When they arrived in Houston to watch Germany play its first game of the tournament, former Texans defensive end J.J. Watt hooked them up with a hotel suite stocked with snacks and signed sports merch.
Their suitcases became so stuffed with gifts they required new ones.
All the while, Freddy has reveled in the experience. He searched for alligators in swamps and attended his first baseball game. He dined on Texas barbecue with members of a local police department.
And the opportunities kept coming. NASA astronaut Anne McClain showed Freddy and his friends around the Johnson Space Center, where they called the International Space Station and sat in the commander seat of a spacecraft.
“This is the American dream,” Freddy wrote. “USA rocks.”
A few days later, they met country singer Ella Langley in Oklahoma City and watched her perform. Her team connected with the group after Freddy declared early on she was the “soundtrack of our trip.”
Freddy’s fans have proclaimed his American tour a public relations win for the country.
“Freddy has done in a few days what a motivational speaker would never achieve in 1000 speeches,” one person said on X.
Another added: “I look forward to every one of Freddy’s posts. They celebrate the geographic and regional diversity of America in a way that I’ve never seen before.”
That idea has been embraced by politicians, particularly members of the Trump administration. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has repeatedly highlighted the journey. Another official invited Freddy to the White House.
“We love watching Freddy’s journey on his road trip across the US,” Duffy posted on Thursday. “There is no better way to learn about America’s story than from the open road, in our towns, and with the people!”
Still, skeptics have questioned Freddy’s identity and motives. They’ve expressed unease about conservatives politicizing his travels, the number of companies reaching out for collaborations, and that he never shows his face or posts in German.
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Some have labeled him an internet psyop and a “CIA plant.”
“My sense is that this probably started out innocently enough, he probably is an online right wing dude, then he got some traction, engagement baited as one does, and then now is just boosted propaganda,” Jay Caspian Kang, a staff writer at the New Yorker, posted on X Tuesday. “That’s how it works now — everyone makes content so just incentivize and boost.”
Such chatterintensified after Freddy posted on June 19 that his flight from Dallas to Canada had been canceled becauseof poor weather, meaning he and his friends would miss the Germany-Ivory Coast match in Toronto. His replies turned into a live bidding war. American Airlines and Air Canada offered to help. The CEO of a private jet operator proposed flying the whole group.
With Watt’s help, they ended up flying on American — and making it to the game as planned.
Freddy’s anonymity might ring alarms bells for some observers, said Jonas Kaiser, a journalism professor at Suffolk University and social media expert. But the backlash, he added, illustrates what often happens when a figure rapidly becomes an online sensation: conspiracy theories emerge, and they become the subject of political debate.
“There are a lot of people projecting certain topics that they care about onto this specific phenomenon,” Kaiser said. “There are a lot of tension points here.”
For his part, Freddy has said “I’m not an influencer and never want to be one.”
Even before he became an internet celeb, Freddy had a fairly strong following, with his posts primarily revolving around Ronaldo.Engagement with his account was on the rise before his World Cup road trip, but soared once it began, according to data collected by Kaiser.
Attempts to reach Freddy were unsuccessful.
It appears he has only spoken publicly about his new famewith a local newspaper in Germany. Although he declined even there to provide identifying information, including his real name, he told the Hamburger Abendblatt this week that he’s in his “twenties” and studying media management at a school in his hometown of Hamburg.
“This feels completely unreal. And we still don’t really understand why this has happened. We haven’t done anything special,” Freddy said of the attention. “We only really notice it when we meet people.”
“They all treat us like we’re the biggest stars in the country,” he added.
Freddy also said he and his friends declined an invitation to the White House, not wanting to get involved in politics.
For now, his World Cup trip continues full speed ahead. While in Canada, Freddy took a boat tour to Niagara Falls and tried poutine for the first time. Then he returned to the US.
“Back in the land of the free, we missed it,” he wrote. Commenters rejoiced.
“How Americans are responding to Freddy tells us something about how we want to be viewed, and what we want to believe about how others see us,” said Abbie DeCamp, an English professor at Northeastern University who specializes in internet culture and memes. “What if we were this entranced by our own cultural outputs?”
Freddy and a friend are now heading to Boston, crossing through a handful of states along the way, including Vermont. They’re trying to avoid interstates, he said, to take in as much local color as possible.
Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, who owns a restaurant on Boylston Street, has already promised them a “treat” upon their arrival. On Monday, Freddy says they’ll watch the Germany match at Boston Stadium.
Meanwhile, fans are staying attuned to the adventures of Freddy, despite not know exactly who he is.
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“It feels like Spider-Man in the mask,” DeCamp said. “People love a mystery.”
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