Masal Bugduv, the 16-year-old Moldovan sensation whose name is on everyone’s lips, was, you’ll recall, listed at number 30 on the Times‘s rundown of “Football’s top 50 rising stars”—right up until the moment when Fredorrarci established his nonexistence this morning. After the news of their mistake reached the news reporters at the newspaper (always the last to know), they silently changed the list. Silently in this case meaning without running the following correction or any near variant of it:
CORRECTION: The original version of this story referred to Masal Bugduv, a 16-year-old Moldovan attacker whom we described as “Moldova’s finest.” In fact, there is no such player. Seriously. Doesn’t even come into this as Jack Wilshere’s Warhammer avatar, in fact. I mean, “Masal Bugduv” isn’t even a Moldovan name. For implying that a culturally inappropriate chimera whom we had never heard of or seen play should rank within breathing distance of Mark Noble, we apologize. We regret the error.
What they did instead, however, was also kind of revealing. They took an Arsenal player who wasn’t originally on the list at all, Jay Simpson, and slotted him straight in at number 30. How, you might ask, does that make sense? Shouldn’t the player in the 31st spot, who has already suffered the insult of being rated below a striker without any atoms in his body, move up to 30, and so on down the list? Shouldn’t Bugduv’s replacement come in at the 50th position, like a first alternate? No, as it turns out. Because that would require some reformatting.
Now, maybe a defensive Times employee would say that I’m taking their list too seriously. To which I would reply that taking a list like this seriously is not a shortcoming to which I would generally subscribe. But they were the ones who wrote and published the list! How did they want me to take it?
Anyway, congratulations, Jay Simpson. You’ve come from nowhere to hurtle 20 of the top rising stars in football. The presumably-present-on-this-physical-plane Khalfan Ibrahim is sputtering in your wake. Kieran Westwood is in your sights, and who knows, if Grenoble’s Sofiane Feghouli turns out to be a sticker on the side of a lunchbox, you might leap up another 15 places.
Read More: Going the Extra Mile, Masal Bugduv
by Brian Phillips · January 15, 2009
Phonetically masal bugduv would sound very familiar to an Irish person: Spelling in Gaelic it is “M’asal beag dubh” but prounced as “masal bug duv” and means
“My little black donkey.”
Fantastic. Combine that with the fake newspaper called Diario Mo Thon and the evidence for the prank’s Irish origin seems overwhelming.
Unless someone can demonstrate that “Masal Bugduv” is Turkish for “this person has no atoms,” of course.
That’s a theory, alright. But wouldn’t most people pronounce “beag” with a kind a y-sound in it — approximately “byug”? And why “my little black donkey”? Is this some really obvious reference I’m missing? Some kind of Gaeltacht euphemism or something…
It’s a better theory than I can come up with, though. I’ve been thinking it might be an anagram, but I’m rubbish at anagrams.
Well, before anyone goes frantically Googling Irish children’s stories: here’s My Little Black Donkey in handy Google Books form.
Granted, it’s a hundred-year-old children’s fable, but it’s actually an amazing parable of the transfer season, if you look.
Here’s one of those Masal Bugduv AP stories. As well as having a great headline–
I WILL DESTROY LUXEMBOURG AND JOIN ARSENAL SAYS BUGDUV
–it’s submitted by someone calling themselves Galwaygooner. Some of the other “stories” were posted in blogs by readers with Irish-sounding names. It’s not proof, of course, but it’s not bad. And I’m more convinced of the Little Black Donkey than I was.
Is there any way of reading the story on that Google Books page?
Does it not show on the Google Books page I linked to? I’m going to throw up a post with some quotes. This has to be it. It’s too funny.
The author of ‘M’Asal Beag Dubh’ is Pádraic Ó Conaire, who hailed from…Galway. Again, might be meaningless, but I so hope this is the right connection…
Are we sure that Jay Simpson actually occupies three corporeal dimensions?
KingSnake — Well, hey, one or two would be an improvement.
Hi Brian – yes I am Dialann on the Guardian blog. Only came across this Masal Bugdov affair on the Guardian site by sheer accident but it piqued my interest because being Irish, it just stood out as being so similar sounding to “M’asal beag dubh.” Having looked at all the comments/blogs now, I am a little saddened that what was intended as nothing more than a very casual for-your-information comment should bring this forensics analysis to an abrupt ending – excellent investigative work by fredorraci and yourself – just hope my off the cuff remark has not spoiled the fun. Regards, DM.
Spoiled the fun? Not a chance—this whole story seems to get more fun the more we know about it. And there’s still the small forensic matter of figuring out exactly who was behind all this…