It’s the year 2008, football continues its growth throughout the world, the money is starting to become astronomical, the stories are of minnows fighting giants but none could have predicted what was occurring in Eastern Europe.
The year of Robinho to Manchester City, Berbatov to the red side of Manchester, Spain winning the 2008 European Championship and little Havant and Waterlooville taking the lead twice in an FA Cup game against Liverpool.
This story is of a new teenage Sensation coming out of Moldovan football, Masal Bugduv, later to take 30th place in The Times’ top 50 most promising young footballers in the world. In 2008, the 16-year-old was reported to have recorded an assist on his international debut in a 2-2 draw against Armenia.
A player plying his trade at Olimpia Balti (now Zaria Balti). A name rarely mentioned nowadays and if brought up in conversation on failed wonderkids, is almost unrecognisable.
Well the reason he never made is simple, it was an elaborate hoax, Masal Bugduv the Moldovan wonderkid, simply did not exist.
Who was Masal Bugduv?
So, who was (or more appropriately who wasn’t) Masal Bugduv? The short answer is he was a figment of someone’s imagination. The long answer is, he was the tool used to prove how easy it was to fool the masses back in 2008 and how simple it was to create large transfer rumours out of thin air.
An Irish journalist, Declan Varley, created the story of Masal Bugduv as a way to show the footballing world how agents used their skills to exaggerate their clients (Football Players) to increase asking prices for transfer fees and more importantly to them, wages and agent fees.
This practice is still seen today and will likely be around forever. So how exactly did Declan Varley create such a successful hoax and leave football clubs, including the likes of the mighty Arsenal, scratching their heads.
A story like this wouldn’t hold up today, not with the current capabilities we have in mainstream media and the mass reporting of worldwide football matches. The likes of this would not make it past Twitter and transfer rumour forums without somebody working out that it’s all fake.
This was 2008 however, the media was not as powerful then and researching this kind of player wasn’t as simple as it is nowadays unless you were a local expert of Moldovan soccer. Declan Varley decided to capitalise on this and created this illusional footballer with no evidence proving he was real, and to the surprise of everyone looking back, it worked.
What inspired the name?
Irishman Varley’s first call to arms was to name his phantom footballer, this was an opportunity for Varley to be witty and clever, almost a clue to the truth behind the lies. To many Masal Bugduv is just a name, but spoken out phonetically it becomes a centrepiece in a famous piece of Irish literature, M’asal Beag Dubh.
This was a story by writer Pádraic ó Conaire of a man who overpays for a lazy donkey because of the lies and exaggeration of the owners. This inspired Varley to use the name Masal Bugduv as a reference to agents overpricing their clients and sparking rumours that just aren’t true to increase price.
How did Varley convince the journalism world?
So, with a name and a clever swindle in place Varley introduced Masal Bugduv into the world. After adding this ghost into Moldova’s national squad on Wikipedia and attributing to him an assist on debut people would certainly be on the search for this 16-year-old Moldovan prodigy immediately and Varley knew this.
The next trick in Varley’s playbook was the invention Bugduv’s very own agent and to create associated press releases in regards to Bugduv. Of course, none of what was said was true but people weren’t to know this, Varley created reports that Arsenal and Liverpool were both interested in signing this young Moldovan prodigy. Varley published these press reports where he could, chat boards and message forums, doing what was possible to bring the story of Masal Bugduv to a larger audience.
Varley, the master of the puppet, soon added Bugduv to Moldova’s national squad once again for a World Cup Qualifier to face Luxembourg, even fathoming a quote from the young man, ‘I will destroy Luxembourg and then join Arsenal’. Big words from a non-existent man, words however that increased the interest around him.
And then what happened?
These words that eventually led to Masal Bugduv’s name being mentioned on Sky Sports News with Mark Hughes, then Manchester City boss, and Harry Redknapp making comments about the player. Varley had the footballing world in the palm of his hands, he had managed to convince managers and media titans that this ghost was real.
30. Masal Bugduv (Olimpia Balti)
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
The Times top 50 rising stars
Masal Bugduv’s crowning moment soon arrived, being ranked 30th on The Times’ 50 most promising young footballers in the world (now removed from the publication), quotes such as “Moldova’s finest” and “Strongly linked with a move to Arsenal” headlining his section of the article.
This is a young player who simply never existed and even six months prior wasn’t even a name in Varley’s imagination. To go from an Irish tale to the 30th most promising young footballer in the world in six months sounds unbelievable, and yet people believed it.
What happened to Masal Bugduv?
It wasn’t until 2009 when the false pretences of Masal Bugduv hoax became truth, but by then Varley had gotten his message out to the world. Agents are not to be trusted, the media is gullible and all is not as it seems, a man with a plan to expose these parties came, fooled around with them all and simply vanished.
Declan Varley officially announced himself as the man behind the mask in 2017, albeit to some dubious listeners, but overtime it has become accepted he created this enigma and tricked all of us.
In Ireland to this day, in Coyne’s Gastropub in the Connemara, the tale is remembered. A Moldovan national team football shirt hangs proudly on the wall with Bugduv inscribed on the back. Michael Coyne, the owner, has ancestral connections to the piece of Irish literature that inspired Declan Varley to name this budding young footballer.
Many people must visit this establishment and leave with some bemusement about who the footballer on the wall is, but as we now know, the wonderkid on the wall was never a wonderkid at all.
You might be thinking football journalism learned from this embarrassment. But he hoax is not unique, Rajko Purovic came to national attention the same way as a prank in 2009 six months later. And while not exactly the same, Ali Dia’s cameo for Southampton came from a phone call from someone pretending to be George Weah. Although he was at least real, just not a very good footballer.
