It may be that soccer’s relentless and soulless glide into the fashionable world of high finance, sponsors, agents, and luxury boxes will eventually smother the sport’s much earthier origins.

But not just yet. Carlos Tevez and Wayne Rooney, two of the sport’s youngest and brightest stars, will keep that older tradition alive for a while longer.

Both players were born into the urban poverty that has given soccer so many of its top players. Tevez hails from a crimeridden barrio of Buenos Aires dubbed “Fort Apache”; Rooney grew up among the jobless of Liverpool’s Croxteth. Different continents, different cultures, different languages – but the same poverty, the same sport.

Both players have risen quickly to the top – Tevez is 20, Rooney 19 – which has meant sudden and wrenching changes in their life styles. Rooney made his name with the Liverpool club Everton, but then came the moment, earlier this year, when he had to let it be known that Everton was not big enough for him.

The slick, moneyed upper levels of the sport were at work by then, and Rooney’s agent moved him quickly to one of Everton’s bitter rivals, Manchester United. ManU paid Everton a fee of $60 million, plus another $3 million to the agent. “He could have been a God, he chose to be a Devil” said the graffiti on the Everton stadium – punning on ManU’s nickname, the Red Devils. The Rooney family no longer lives in Croxteth.

And the Tevez family no longer lives in Fort Apache. Their son’s fame with his club Boca Juniors meant they could afford the move to a better neighborhood. And this past week the moment arrived for Tevez to tell Boca Juniors – his club since the age of 12 – that he wanted to move further onwards and upwards. That was no surprise: Any promising South American player is always going to be targeted by the rich European clubs. But there was a surprise nonetheless: Tevez was headed not for Europe, but for Brazil.

The Sao Paulo club Corinthians was paying $20 million to Boca and everyone’s first thought was: Where would a Brazilian club get that sort of money? (Soccer in Brazil and Argentina has been, for more than a decade, a shaky business relying for income on the export of its players to Europe.)

We knew soon enough. An English-based investment company, Media Sports Investments, was buying heavily into Corinthians, paying off its debts (said to be around $15 million), and funding the purchase of star players. Corinthians President Alberto Dualib welcomed the move as a turnaround for the whole sport: “This partnership with MSI represents the return of foreign capital to Brazilian football.”

But some Corinthians directors were worried that not enough was known about MSI and its boss, the Iranian Kia Joorabchian. The information gap was soon filled by swelling rumors, many of which involved the new Russian plutocracy.

Almost inevitably, the name of Roman Abramovich, the Russian who is bankrolling England’s Chelsea, surfaced. He was said to be a shareholder of MSI. His yacht, it was claimed, had been seen in Buenos Aires. Which meant, apparently, that Tevez was bound to end up playing in England for Chelsea.

A Brazilian club outbidding the Europeans for one of the world’s top players is uncharted territory. Clarity about MSI’s finances and motives is lacking and suspicion is widespread. Until those question marks are resolved, it will remain unclear just who owns the rights to Carlos Tevez, and whether his ultimate destination is Brazil or Europe.

In Buenos Aires, Boca President Mauricio Macri, while lamenting the departure of Tevez, also came under criticism from those who felt that the $20 million fee was not nearly enough. Could Rooney – with a transfer value of $60 million – be worth three times as much as Tevez? Certainly not in terms of what the players offer on the field.

Since their transformation from street kids to millionaires, we have seen photos of Rooney and Tevez wearing expensive clothes, both equally awkward in shirt collars that seem too big and jacket sleeves that look too short. No, they’re not cut out to be models, these strikingly similar bodies: Rooney at 5-feet-10 inches and 168 pounds, Tevez at 5-feet-8 inches and 169 pounds. Short, muscular, immensely powerful fireplugs, they play the same position – either as a forward or as an attacking midfielder – and there are stylistic similarities.

Their short stature means a low center of gravity, and that, combined with tree-trunk legs, means they are not easily knocked off the ball. Those bulging legs also mean they can shoot with ferocious power, and both players are goal-scorers.

The word “genius” has been applied to Rooney by the English press, but I have yet to see the Argentines elevate Tevez to that level. South American standards are higher than those that apply in England – to call Tevez a genius would be to move him up alongside Diego Maradona.

I detect a distinct difference in the two, which reflects the long-recognized difference between the South American and the European player. While both have exceptional ball skills, Rooney’s game is primarily about strength. His fearless, surging runs with the ball intimidate with their sheer raw power, as opponents are swept aside or simply afraid to tackle.

It is both exciting and effective. But it is not exactly dribbling – a refined soccer skill that requires artistry and trickery. Tevez does that sort of thing much better. He combines it with the ability to make daring, unlikely, subtle passes to his teammates. Rooney’s playmaking ability seems much more straightforward.

Rooney’s skills may appear honed for the English game, but he showed during Euro2004 that he can strike fear into foreign opponents as well. Tevez has also proved himself internationally, helping Argentina to Olympic gold earlier this year, and Boca to the 2003 world club title over AC Milan.

Some day in the near future an England-Argentina game will pit the one against the other. Two brilliant youngsters who bring a healthy reminder that though modern soccer’s prizes are all about vast amounts of money, its stars still tend to arise from areas where poverty, not wealth, forms the player.