Diter Hakrama Does Not Exist

Remember the Masal Bugduv hoax? One cheeky chappy invented Moldovan wunderkind Masal Bugduv, and posted lots of fake press releases about him all over the internet, linking the lad with Arsenal, reporting on his international debut and even manufacturing a feud with Harry Redknapp.

The Times bought it and placed Bugduv 30th on their list of Football’s 50 Rising Stars, setting themselves up for some major embarrassment when Fredorarrci exposed the hoax. Thoroughly entertaining stuff.

Not so entertaining is the lame copycat attempt that appeared in The Offside forums back in January.

Someone somewhere decided to try the exact same tactics that created Masal Bugduv and posted this profile of fictional New York Red Bulls academy player Diter Hakrama in our Red Bulls Forum. We’ve since deleted the forum posting, but I couldn’t resist taking this screenshot:

Not sure who that’s a picture of. But it’s not Red Bulls Academy prospect Diter Hakrama. Because Red Bulls Academy prospect Diter Hakrama does not exist. We know this because our Red Bulls blogger Dave was told by Red Bulls themselves that he does not exist.

A quick Google (yep, using it as a verb) reveals a few other Hakrama breadcrumbs…

There’s a blog post about him on the suspiciously lightweight “Diter Hakrama: From The Beginning and Now” blogspot blog, much like the single post blog created for Masal Bugduv.

And for some reason, Hakrama has a BigSoccer user profile, although he’s yet to post.

And searching our archives, the same would-be-prankster also left a comment on Red Bulls Offside, way back in April 2008.

Which suggests that maybe Hakrama was an earlier, aborted attempt at a full-scale Masal Bugduv hoax. Fair enough, if the original prankster was planting multiple seeds in 2008 to which ones grew.

But there was definitely no need to resurrect Hakrama in January 2009. The thing about something like Masal Bugduv is that it’s only funny or entertaining or clever once.

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Category: World Football