Meet Eric Franck – The Canadian Soccer Genius Going Viral On TikTok
By If you have ever found yourself browsing TikTok and you have an interest in soccer, chances are you’ve seen a video by Eric Franck.
The 21-year-old from Halifax has achieved massive success on the platform for his superhuman knowledge of the game. Need a New Caledonian forward? Franck can instantly recall 2012 Oceania Nations Cup runner-up Georges Gope-Fenepej, an otherwise unremarkable player who has bounced around the French leagues his entire career.
Franck says his knowledge of the game today is an extension of his interest in geography when he was younger.
“I got really into soccer when I was like ten years old. Following soccer, watching soccer, and playing FIFA, I became really interested in players from obscure nations that were in good leagues. That just kind of drew me to it. You’d see players playing in FA Cup finals from Barbados and Honduras, and I’d be like, wow, that’s really cool.”
Of course, his strong memory also plays a part.
“Most events in my life I can recall pretty well. If it’s something I’m really not into, or feels like a task like certain subjects in school, It’s not that I don’t remember, I just don’t really put in any effort or care,” says Franck. “Certain sciences, I just sometimes couldn’t be bothered, because I’d rather just go home and watch soccer, play soccer, play FIFA.”
After attending his first year of university online during lockdowns, Franck decided to take the next year off. He continued doing his day job, a busser at a restaurant, and began making TikTok videos in March 2022.
“There’s a flag filter that just came up one day and I was like, let me just build a team using these, and it took off. It got half a million views in the first day, a lot of great comments, so I just kept doing it with slight variations.”
Franck reached 40,000 followers within two months, and after getting small brand deals and the opportunity to work with his local CPL team, the Halifax Wanderers, he decided to fully focus on his TikTok.
“I literally set a goal before I made the first one in March, that I wanted 15,000 followers by the summer. Around my birthday, which is July 4, I got 100,000 followers. So I completely smashed that goal, and I was like, this is much more than I could have expected,“ said Franck. “At that point, I didn’t really have the drive to continue with school. I just picked that degree as something to choose, not because it was a passion of mine. Football’s my life. That’s all I’ve ever been into.”
In the time since, Franck has amassed over 220,000 followers, and was invited to watch a game live by German club Bayer Leverkusen. He says his goal now is to grow his Youtube channel in hopes of securing a content creation job in the soccer industry.