Meet Masal Bugduv, the A-League's newest star

I have a confession to make: I watch Italian football. I have ever since the much-travelled Giuseppe Signori was top scorer in the league with Lazio.

I used to love Signori’s style. That electrifying pace, those long flowing locks, his total reliance on that sweet left foot. I was disappointed when Sydney FC favoured signing another washed-up old star in Dwight Yorke instead of the former Italian international.

At any rate, with Mark Bresciano currently doing so well at Palermo, I had originally planned to write about the man known for his ‘Spartacus’ celebrations.

Bresciano has been in scintillating form for his club in the new year – getting on the scoresheet against Atalanta, scoring both goals in a 2-0 win away at Sampdoria and playing solidly in Palermo’s most recent 3-2 victory over Udinese.

The much-loved Melbournian seemed as good a topic for an article as any.

But when I recently checked Milan’s English-language site for any news on Australia’s other Serie A representative Zeljko Kalac, I came across the following gem in the build-up to the Rossoneri’s trip to Bologna.

“Due to a problem to his cervix, Zeljko Kalac is forced to stay at Milanello.”

Now unless ‘Spider’ has been getting up to things that the wider football community remains unaware of, I’d say that’s a classic case of lost in translation!

After a brief chuckle, I realised that Kalac’s phantom injury was an example of why it’s not a good idea to believe everything that you read on a football website.

Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to the strange case of Masal Bugduv.

Some of you may be familiar with Bugduv. UK newspaper The Times certainly is. In an article entitled Football’s Top 50 Rising Stars, they waxed lyrical about him:

“Moldova’s finest, the 16-year-old attacker has been strongly linked with a move to Arsenal, work permit permitting. And he’s been linked with plenty of other top clubs as well.”

Unfortunately for The Times – and for Goal.com and respected monthly When Saturday Comes, who also fell for the ruse – Bugduv is fictitious.

He’s as much a figment of the imagination as the articles Stephen Glass once wrote for The New Republic.

And Bugduv’s nascent rise to fame shows just how easy it is to invent stories for the voracious football public.

In a brutal exposé on US website Slate.com, blogger Brian Phillips explains in depth how the hoax was perpetrated – probably by some literature-loving Irish folk.

It all gets a bit convoluted, but the general consensus is that the name Masal Bugduv sounds similar to the way M’asal Beag Dubh is pronounced in Gaelic.

I’m digging deep into Wikipedia territory here, but apparently M’asal Beag Dubh is the name of a story by Gaelic writer Pádraic Ó Conaire – whose tale of attempting to sell a lazy donkey for an inflated price provides the inspiration for the hoax.

According to those who helped cracked the case, the rise and rapid fall of Masal Bugduv is a satire on the state of the game.

It’s a clever one indeed.

Most caustically it takes aim at the number of European media outlets who publish as fact unsubstantiated rumours of player movements during the January transfer window.

And it has journalists across the globe quaking in their padded seats.

I wouldn’t be that surprised if there’s another sting in the tail – there’s probably a lesson about using Wikipedia for source material in all of this – but the strange case of Masal Bugduv is a triumph for those who claim that journalists are often paid to produce fiction.

What price a Masal Bugduv transfer to the A-League?

With so many Australian clubs heading off into “the unknown” that is the Asian Champions League, he could be just the kind of secret weapon that they need.