On the face of it, Quinton Fortune's decision to dump his South African agent was nothing more than a wise business move.
Why should the Manchester United footballer hand over 20 percent of his gross earnings (estimated at R154 000 a week) to Colin Gie when an English agent, or business manager as they like to be called, would be more than happy with half that?
Gie has taken Fortune to the Cape High Court to get the player to honour an agreement stipulating Gie gets 20 percent of Fortune's earnings for 15 years.
The matter has been postponed to Wednesday.
It seems Fortune found a replacement for Gie in 2003, though "found" is stretching things.
It was more likely a case of Britain's most powerful soccer manager manipulating things to suit himself and his clan.
In place of Gie, Fortune turned to Jason Ferguson, son of Man United manager Alex.
In a recent biography of the United manager, The Boss: The Many Sides of Alex Ferguson, British journalist Michael Crick tells how Fergie has pushed United players into using Jason as their agent.
He usually got his way with young players or those, like Fortune, who'd known no other agent other than Gie since the age of 15.
After quitting his job because of what he considered the poor pay at Sky Sports - where he'd rocketed through the ranks without his father's help - Jason became a football agent.
This is where Fergie came in, putting pressure on the directors of L'Attitude, a Manchester agency that looked after the affairs of lower-division players as well as a number of United's reserves.
When the directors, Kieran Toal (a former United youth player) and Andy Dodd, didn't jump at the idea of having Jason on board, Fergie put huge pressure on them.
Crick alleges Ferguson let the directors know that "their relations with United would not continue to be so profitable and cosy if Jason wasn't on board.
The author reckons that Ferguson helped Jason because he had neglected his sons when they were younger.
"Alex Ferguson perhaps rationalised giving the work to his son by thinking that if an agent had to profit from United transfers, it might as well be Jason," writes Crick.
Jason's stay with L'Attitude wasn't long, nor was the survival of the business once it lost the Ferguson patronage.
It all started to crumble when L'Attitude handled the transfer back to Italy of the error-prone goalkeeper Massimo Taibi and received a miserly 1 percent of the £2,5-million fee.
The firm wanted more and Jason had words with his father, but Alex wouldn't budge; the whole Taibi affair had been a disaster.
Jason moved on to Elite Sports Group, the firm that played a big role in the controversial transfer of defender Jaap Stam to Lazio.
There have been other incidents but they failed to make the news probably because youth team players were involved.
The book describes how Fergie swore at teenagers Dominic Studley and Josh Howard after learning they had spurned Jason's advances and signed with Mel Stein, an agent not on the United manager's Christmas-card list.
"He called us in," recalls Howard, "and said: 'What the f...k are you doing signing with him (Stein)? You can f...k off out of here. I hope he gets you a club, because I won't. You'll never get any f.....g help from this club'."
Two other youngsters, Jonathan Greening and Mark Wilson, also had Stein as their agent and when the pair, who played a handful of first-team games in 2001, asked for a transfer, Fergie refused to sell them unless they appointed Jason as their agent.
When Stein and Wilson threatened legal action Fergie let them go to Middlesbrough.
The book highlights Ferguson's strange decision to help his son become an agent after his much-publicised hatred of agents.
And there is none other he loathes more than Tony Stephens, whose SFX agency has included Alan Shearer, Michael Owen and David Beckham who signed up in 1996.
When Stephens went round to Fergie's house to let the manager know Beckham had signed with SFX, the agent got the infamous "hairdryer" treatment.
According to the book: "Fergie went mental, chasing Stephens down the driveway, screaming 'How dare you come to my f.....g house. Get the f..k out of here'!"
The following day Fergie told Beckham to change his agent, but the player refused. Ferguson's reply went: "Well, if you don't leave him you can use your f.....g agent to transfer you to another club." Which Beckham replied: "OK, going then."
Of course Fortune is unlikely to soon be heading for Real Madrid, but it makes you think... why the likes of Stam and Beckham are not still at Old Trafford when United clearly need them.