The UNO is programmed with the Optiboot 4.4, the FTDI cable and the 'Sparkfun' Breakout board do not work with this version. I'm now using the Duemilanove bootloader and it works fine.
When attempting to program the clone with optiboot and the ftdi cable, did you select "Uno" as the board type?
The board type to use is strongly (exclusively perhaps) dependent on the bootloader, rather than the cabling details. If you had selected, say, "Arduino Pro with m328" because it is also uploaded via FTDI, that would have been wrong.