“Carlos is a fantastic little player and he knows that I want him to stay,” Ferguson said. “[But] we are not negotiating with a football club and that’s the problem.”

Ferguson’s frustration stems from the fact that Tevez’s economic rights are ultimately controlled by a group of investors fronted by Joorabchian. Such arrangements are commonplace in Latin American but are anathema to many in English football, Ferguson apparently included.

But perhaps unknown to many people United have an exclusive player trading deal with a Brazilian club owned by a company that specialises in such arrangements.

Last November United struck a deal with Desportivo Brasil, a youth club owned by Traffic Football Management, that gives Ferguson first option on more than 120 teenagers being groomed for European football in a Sao Paulo academy in run by World Cup winner Carlos Alberto Parreira.

Traffic also wholly or part-owns the economic rights to another 90 or so professionals via two multi-million dollar investment funds founded expressly to profit from the transfer of promising Brazilian players.

United’s deal, designed to give them a competitive advantage in the global search for new talent, sheds light on the system of third-party ownership prevalent in Latin America.

It also demonstrates the methods being employed to accommodate Fifa rules forbidding the exercise of third-party influence, introduced in 2008 in the fallout from Tevez’s spell at West Ham.

Traffic’s core business is sports media rights and sponsorship – it has the regional rights to FA Cup and England matches – but in 2005 it branched out into player management. It now operates two distinct player businesses, one based on developing players through its academy and the other on the purchase of players’ economic rights, � la Tevez.

United’s relationship is with the first strand of the business, a youth academy affiliated to Desportivo Brasil, a club founded and wholly-owned by Traffic in 2005 to “identify, train and educate new football talents and to prepare them for a professional career”.

The club enters teams at under-15, under-17 and under-20 levels in the Sao Paulo regional league, with a view to selling them on to professional clubs in Brazil and Europe.

With some of the best talent in Brazil being hot-housed by Perreira, United’s chief scout Ken Shackleton had no hesitation in recommending a deal that gives United first option on players produced by the club. The relationship could reap its first reward next season if United take up their option on 17-year-old full-back Dodo.

Traffic maintain that Desportivo Brasil is a bona fide club and that any players traded to United will move without third-party influence.

“There is no controversy about what we do and no connection to the Tevez case,” says Jochen Losch, Traffic’s head of international business.

“United are already in Brazil scouting teenagers but it is very expensive way to do it. Now we look for players together and they have first option to take them at 17.

“Traffic maintain an interest in the player’s economic rights, and we agree with United to take a percentage of any future transfer fee. The deal is within Fifa’s rules. It would be circumventing the rules if the club was a sham and did not exist but it is 100 per cent legal.” A United spokesman concurred: “Our link is with the club so any deal to bring players in would be within Fifa and Premier League rules.”

Telegraph Sport has established that Traffic’s other business model, based on buying players’ economic rights in order to profit from future transfer revenue, is identical in principle to the relationship between Tevez and Joorabchian.

Traffic insist that while they have a share in their players’ economic rights they do not seek to exercise third-party influence and therefore do not breach Fifa regulations.

The distinction between ‘interest’ and ‘influence’ is a grey area at the heart of widespread unease over third-party ownership. A fact of life in Latin America, its proponents insist that it provides clubs with much-needed capital and players with professional guidance.

Its opponents argue that it damages the system and makes chattels of players from deprived backgrounds for whom football is their only hope. Losch insists that Traffic’s player business sprang from a desire to help develop young players from impoverished backgrounds.

Having established Desportivo in 2005, in 2007 it set up an investment fund worth more than $20 million and used it to by shares in promising players form cash-strapped Brazilian clubs. A second fund worth $35 million has since been started and the Traffic roster now runs to 90 players, many of whom play against each other week-in-week out with a growing number competing in the European leagues. Last summer eight Traffic players moved to Europe, generating more than €30 million in fees.

“We buy some of the economic rights of the player and hope to make a profit on them,” says Losch. “We pay the club to assign a claim over the player’s future value to us. For example, we pay a club $1 million for 20 per cent of the economic rights of a player and agree that if they sell him for $10 million we will take $2 million. It is completely legal and in line with Fifa rules.”