Reds announce Brazilian link

RedPhil1957

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Manchester United Academy has joined up with the Brazilian youth club Desportivo Brasil.

The exciting football-driven venture will see players from both clubs visiting each country for the opportunity to experience new training methods and play friendly matches.

The project, driven by Brian McClair, Les Kershaw and John Calvert Toulmin (United's South American recruitment officer), is seen as an invaluable learning curve for players.

While Desportivo have an excellent team of professionals, the Academy will provide technical support to improve Desportivo’s preparation of young players, optimising the chance that players from their club will excel when moving to Europe.

United Academy coaches from different age groups will visit Brazil on a regular basis and Desportivo coaches will be welcomed on reciprocal visits. For United, this will provide invaluable insight into the way the five-time world champions approach the beautiful game.

Academy manager Brian McClair said: “It is exciting to be involved with such an innovative partnership that allows each club to glean knowledge from each other and so develop the future of football.”

United chief executive David Gill added: “This is a fantastic opportunity for our coaches and Academy players. They will gain invaluable knowledge and experience from Desportivo. Brazilian football has always been consistent and we already have a strong Brazilian contingent at the club. This will forge an even stronger relationship.

"Desportivo Brasil is located in the city of Itu, an hour’s drive from Sao Paulo, and is focused on youth football. The club fields teams competing in the Sao Paulo state championship at U15, U17 and U20 level.

They are currently putting the finishing touches to a new training complex that, when completed, will be one of the top facilities exclusively for junior football in the world. Desportivo’s head consultant is Brazil’s World Cup-winning coach Carlos Alberto Parreira.
 
x42bn6 said:
Can only benefit both sides.

Although I wonder if this is just a sneaky affiliation like Fluminense.
Click to expand...



It seems on paper a very good idea for both players and coaches. I think it will prove to be very benificial to the club helping to improve both players and coaches in the future. I am surprised there is so little interest on here.
 
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, à 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.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/fo...s-no-connection-to-the-Carlos-Tevez-case.html
 
Was hoping for Gremio or Cruzeiro when i clicked in here! But hopefully this will work out the same.
 
I wonder why United haven't set up a similar thing in Argentina.
 
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