Masal Bugduv is Moldovan for Sidd Finch

There's a pretty good piece over at Soccerlens about teen phenom Masal Bugduv. He's Moldovan. He's 16. That can only mean that he's coveted by Arsenal.

And as such, he was listed at #30 in the Times Online's list of 'Football's Top 50 Rising Stars' published Monday of this week.

Only one problem. Masal Bugduv doesn't seem to exist.

Soccerlens runs through a complete run down of any existence of non-existence of the player in the cyber ephemera.

There is of course one more twist to the saga. Or at least a very silent mea culpa.

The screen cap above is from soccerlens where they merely quote the blurb about Bugduv and his number 30 ranking. But if you go to the link of the article here, then you'll notice that Bugduv has now been removed from the list (assumiing he was once there... we never saw the original).

In his place? "Homer" Jay Simpson. Another Arsenal teenybopper (Oops, no, he just turned 20 late last month). They didn't even bother to shift things around, just subbed one Gunner (on loan to West Brom) for another (on loan to Harchester United).

Really, check out the Soccerlens piece (here). It's a quick read and totally worth the time. It wasn't just the Times that got fooled either. Given the ease with which an identity can be created and talked about, and the general laziness of people (hey, you find 50 names worth talking about) it's almost amazing this kind of stuff doesn't happen more often.

Oh, and for those of you not familiar with the original George Plimpton piece of Sidd Finch, it is also totally worth a read.

UPDATE: The Guardian has has picked up on the story. Additionally there is a nice bit of literary background to some of the entymology (or is this etymology) in the Bugduv story over at Run of Play.