Should I follow my famous teammate on social media?

As part of a sports team in a western country, I’ve recently become acquainted with one of my teammates. This teammate also happens to be a prominent and well known athlete playing for the African national team in the upcoming world cup of the country that I was born in lol. He is a little bit of a celebrity in my home country so low key feeling a little bit starstruck HAHA. And while most of our team follows him on social media, his account is set to private mode. I am kind of new to the team and missed the opportunity to follow him on social media so feeling a little bit bummed.

I genuinely admire and respect his skills, and as someone with a similar background, I feel a sense of connection. I don’t think I will ever get the chance to follow him on instagram again as he won’t be playing for my team anymore next year and will return back to his home country. Ironically I am actually going back to his country at the end of the year on vacation hahaha, so it’s kinda cool telling family back home that I know and am friends with this person.

In terms of how close we are – We train around 3x per week together and play a game each week, I’ve had some conversations with him but not too much that we are best buds or anything. I even went to a meet and greet where he introduced me as his teammate !

I follow the social media page of the country he plays for and saw his instagram account name on one of the highlight reels in a story hence I found his account. Upon looking through I noticed that half of my team follows him – However, I’m uncertain about sending him a follow request as I don’t want to overstep any boundaries or come across as creepy for searching his name up on instagram. His account is on private so I am a little bit hesitant to do so. And he never told me his social media before… How would you approach this situation? Should I go ahead and request to follow his account? Or not?