Moldova's Best Kept Secret Not So Special After All

What? No Roy Race in the list? You must be kidding!

Whoever gets the copy of New Strait Times (NST) football pull out last Saturday would have notice their centrespread article, Football’s Top 50 Rising Star. Now isn’t that a nicely placed article bearing in mind the ongoing January transfer window?

Among the usual suspects like Karim Benzema and David Silva is one Masal Bugduv, 16 years old Moldovan striker playing for local club Olimpia Balti. Rumours on the net claimed that the only difference between Bugduv and Zidane is the former have more hair than the latter.

Sweet. Hence 30th place Bugduv is expected to make a move to any top European clubs within the next 12 months and most likely be playing Champions League football next season.

But only if the eager scouts manage to locate him, in flesh. As the guy at Soccerlens found out, Masal Bugduv is as real as Roy Race, your favourite footie comic’s hero.

Let’s not torch the NST office as yet, though. The top 50 listing was originally compiled by The Times UK and was reprinted in Malaysia. But that’s bad enough as I’ve wasted Sabah’s price of RM1.80 for a copy of NST to read the same list available on the net plus one fictional player in it.

The fact that Times UK fell for this hoax or prank is damning proof of how gullible the media can be at the slightest mention of ‘new football prodigy to join (insert any EPL’s Big Four) for GBP15 million’.