This started with a question about soccer in America. Or maybe it was really a question about fame. Now that Wayne Rooney, one of the world’s most-renowned soccer players, has signed with DC United, would Washington sports fans recognize him? When told who he was, would they know his name?

Despite a boom over the past 25 years, soccer remains a fringe sport for many Americans. Around the world, photographers besiege Rooney; his face is splashed across magazine covers, television, the internet. He is accustomed to being mobbed. His arrival last week at Dulles Airport drew a throng of supporters. But those were passionate soccer fans. What about the rest of Washington, a city still celebrating the Stanley Cup championship of their hockey team, the Capitals, and a place where passions have always been highest for the local NFL franchise? How big is Rooney’s star in his new home?

To find out an idea was hatched. As someone who has lived in Washington for 13 years, I would walk around town flashing a photo of Rooney, asking people to identify him. We chose to do this at a Washington Nationals baseball game, two blocks from the DC United’s spectacular new Audi Field which will be open on 14 July, the night of Rooney’s first MLS home match.

Monday afternoon seemed a particularly good time to show Rooney’s photo to people. The World Cup has generated a significant buzz, even without the US in the tournament. It also was the day of Rooney’s first DC United press conference and there had been a decent amount of Rooney talk on local media.

I randomly selected two pictures of Rooney. The first was a shot of Rooney in his Manchester United days that struck me as particularly iconic. The second was a more recent headshot from Everton. I figured I’d show people the Manchester United picture first and the headshot as a backup. Then I packed my phone and headed to the ballpark.

“Wayne who?” asked my neighbor Paul who offered me a ride to Metro as I left my house.

I pulled up my Rooney pictures and explained that Rooney is England’s alltime leading goal scorer and was once one of the world’s best players and that he had just signed with DC United, but Paul stared at me blankly. “Is he related to Mickey Rooney?” Paul finally asked. I rolled my eyes. This could be a long afternoon.

In fact most people on my walk around Nationals Park were baffled. Steve Shur, who stood on a corner outside the baseball stadium wearing a Washington Capitals t-shirt, looked hopelessly at Rooney’s photograph, shaking his head. “If you showed me hockey players I’d know every one of them,” said Shur, who said he had heard local sports radio hosts talking about Rooney on Monday, though added he knew nothing about Rooney or his career. “If there’s supposed to be a LeBron effect it isn’t happening,” he said.

The next six people I approached were equally as perplexed.

“I’m not a big soccer fan,” said a man wearing a Nationals jersey.

“Oh, so that’s what Wayne Rooney looks like?” said another.

“One of those guys who dives right?” another man said mysteriously before adding: “He’s that guy they just picked up,” without ever specifying who “they” were.

“Is that you?” asked a young man who had fashioned a drum set from empty plastic buckets on the sidewalk, hoping for tips.

I felt deflated. While Rooney’s career has waned and he is not part of England’s World Cup team, he remains immensely popular and recognizable. Just two months ago, ESPN had named him the world’s 26th-most famous athlete in their annual Fame 100 rankings. I knew my informal poll had flaws – it’s hard, for instance, to be shown a photograph without context and immediately know the person’s identity – but most of those who had looked at my Rooney photos really had no idea who he was.

I wondered if somehow I was asking the wrong kind of people. I had tried to balance my approaches, making sure to ask both male and female fans, while being careful to not ask anyone too old in the assumption that older sports fans in the US tend not to follow soccer. Perhaps I hadn’t sought out enough young people. On the stadium’s concourse I spotted three boys who appeared to be in their late teens wearing Nationals t-shirts, exactly the demographic that is coming to soccer these days.

“Not a clue,” one said.

“Who is that?” asked another.

It had been an hour since I had started showing Wayne Rooney’s photo to Washington sports fans and only seven of the 28 I approached had identified him. And that was being generous because two of the seven didn’t know Rooney’s name. Still, this was Wayne Rooney and these were sports fans in his new city.

I stepped into an elevator with 10 other people. I figured I’d give Rooney one last chance, so I held my phone aloft and said in a loud voice: “Does anyone know who this is?”

Heads turned as everybody peered at my phone. For an instant there was silence. Then a white-haired woman in a Nationals jersey near the front of the car shouted: “Of course! That’s Wayne Rooney!” She paused. “Wuzza!” she continued. “That’s his nickname.”

The elevator doors opened and the crowd pushed out. “His wife’s name is Coleen,” she shouted as she left the elevator. The crowd was moving down the hallway. “You know they call them Wags,” she cried.

I tried to get out of the elevator to chase down this woman in a Nationals jersey who knew so much about Wayne Rooney in a place where no one could recognize his photo. Who was she? Had she lived in England? Did she love soccer? But the doors closed. She was gone.

“A real encyclopedia,” chuckled the one other person left in the elevator.

I smiled and marked the woman down as the eighth person out of 29 who could identify Rooney. Or because there were 10 people in the elevator did that mean she was eight of 39? Somehow it didn’t matter anymore. The woman who knew everything about Rooney had given me a glimmer of hope for his future in the city.