United facing Fortune court battle

Manchester United are set to get dragged into a nasty court battle over how Quinton Fortune ended up with Alex Ferguson’s son Jason’s Elite Sports Agency.

South African agent Colin Gie, who represented Fortune for 14 years, claims he received a call from the player on July 1, 2002 requesting his presence at key discussions over a new contract.

Yet when Gie arrived three days later, Fortune would not even speak to him and offered no explanation why.

The midfielder subsequently signed a three-year contract last May and will be named as one of the 13 United players on Elite’s books in the controversial BBC3 documentary ‘Fergie and Son’ to be screened this evening.

Gie is suing Fortune for loss of earnings and has vowed to publish his own account of events once the court case, scheduled for a mid-August hearing in Cape Town, is completed.

“People need to know the true story about what happened,” Gie told the Press Association.

“I was with Quinton for 14 years but within two days the whole world changed.

“I have a personal management agreement with him and if he doesn’t want to keep it, we can come to a settlement.

“But all I know is on July 1, 2002 he asked me to fly over to Manchester and when I got there two days later, he wouldn’t even talk to me. Something is seriously wrong.”

Gie’s relationship with Fortune was once so close that he entered into a business partnership to launch the FC Fortune youth team that for over 12 months was part of United’s feeder club system.

But he revealed has not spoken to Fortune since the shock snub almost two years ago.

Fortune is contesting the action, although Gie claims to have written and video documentation that will be released to the general public once the case is concluded.

What United officials will fear most is any allegation that their manager may have been involved in Fortune’s abrupt change of heart.

Earlier this week the club announced they would no longer use Elite, of whom Jason Ferguson remains a director, because of the ’external concern’ at the potential for conflict of interest.

But in tonight’s BBC documentary, there is a claim from former Red Devils’ youth player Ashley Dodd that Jason Ferguson is given unlimited access to the club’s Carrington training ground, one of the reasons cited for why so many United players have ended up on their books.