Mohamed al-Fayed sits as still
and silent as the Sphinx. He barely acknowledges anybody, although there
is a cursory comment as Sven-Göran Eriksson leaves the directors' box
10 minutes before the end of the match. Al-Fayed owns everything before
him - the stadium, the team, the management - all bar the opposition. He
says he has invested £80m in Fulham Football Club so far.
He knows I am there, and knows I am watching him, but any conversation,
he insists, will have to come at Harrods the next day. Sunday is for football.
He is emotionally immersed in the game. When Fulham have the ball, he looks
expectant; when the opposition threatens, his temples throb visibly; and
when a Fulham goal is celebrated all around him, the chairman and owner
of the club allows himself a slow smile.
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Mohamed al-Fayed, Chairman and Owner of Fulham Football Club
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When it is over, he rises, passing an aide
a silver flask containing spring water from his Scottish estate. He retires
to the chairman's inner sanctum, away from the chatter, away from post-match
joy or blues. I have come to find out whether al-Fayed is a true football
man, as many who share his Egyptian roots are, or a billionaire trying to
buy popularity in a land where he has lived for three decades but is still
denied citizenship.
He is a football man. Whatever anybody might think of his business,
his vituperative conflicts with the British establishment or his willingness
to see his foes in court, one football fan cannot fake passion or disguise
it from another. Al-Fayed's eyes never leave the ball. The expression reflects
the action: skill brings lightness, ineptitude brings despair.
Later, he will admit that Fulham have been his great escape from grief.
"After Dodi, you mean?" he asks in the fifth-floor grandeur of his private
Harrods offices. Al-Fayed bought Fulham in May 1997; his son Dodi died together
with the Princess of Wales in that tragic car crash in Paris on August 31
of the same year. "It [football] takes you away," al-Fayed answers. "You
think of nothing else for the 90 minutes. No business, no problems, no sadness,
no grievance."
But you suffer, as impotent as any fan when the team is struggling? "Yes.
You want to go down and just kick the ball. You know they can deliver. You
don't know what they were doing the day before. Tigana [Jean Tigana, the
manager] is very firm with them in training, but the form of the player
all depends on his private life."
There is mischief in the chairman's smile. In Alexandria, the port west
of the Nile, his growing up had much to do with chasing footballs, girls
and the first entrepreneurial enterprises that led him from street-trading
for Pepsi to adventures in Saudi Arabia and Brunei. Today, his detractors
say, he may be down to his last £750m. "They are guessing," he scoffs.
"Those stupid people. They report that I lost a third of my investments
by spending too much restoring Harrods, but it's just that I moved borrowings
from one bank to another to get a better deal. It's business, you know."
We stick to Fulham business. For all the prodigious energy of Jimmy Hill's
efforts to save the club by the Thames, it was sinking fast. Al-Fayed says
it was hours from liquidation when he was offered the ancient ground and
the remnants of a team that never recovered from being the butt of music-hall
jokes and was relegated after the mastery of Johnny Haynes waned.
"I paid £20m for Craven Cottage," al-Fayed says. "We are building a
great team and will build a great stadium because Fulham should be an institution.
There are 100,000 fans, but we can accommodate only 21,000 people. We have
to change anyway, because the Premier League says nobody must stand.
"We are giving the fans Fulham back from the dead. We don't want to be as
good as Manchester United, we are going to be better. Real Madrid? Also
better. The best. Look, when I buy the House of Fraser, I get rid of 90
department stores and invest £400m in restoring one, Harrods, the landmark
of stores. When I buy the Ritz in Paris, I and my brothers make it the best
hotel in the world. You ask what is the vision for Fulham . . . also the
best."
He is, momentarily, the Mohamed al-Fayed you see on television. Outlandish,
brash, the salesman. He reaches for mineral water and drinks from the bottle.
"You see," he exclaims, "I am not upper-class like you. "
The boasting and the chip on al-Fayed's shoulder about British prejudices
are interspersed through an exchange that lasts 90 minutes. But they are,
to some extent, the public exhibition. There are times when his command
of English is surprisingly vague, and times when he is evasive about actual
sums in profit and loss on his businesses or his football expenditure. But
who ever met a householder, much less a multi-millionaire, who gives the
full account of his or her worth?
Al-Fayed says his input so far into Fulham amounts to £20m for the
property, a further £10m for the state-of-the-art Motspur Park training
ground and academy, £50m committed to renovating and modernising Craven
Cottage, and then the transfer fees to buy in players, which this season
alone are running at £32m. That is, in total, and with wages for a
staff of 150 people? "Let's say £80m," he answers.
He's smiling, and he knows he has lost me.
"There is," he says, "more to come, God willing." How much more? "What it
takes." If tomorrow Tigana comes to Harrods and suggests he can lure Lilian
Thuram, the most versatile and accomplished defender in football, for £20m
more of the al-Fayed fortune? "No problem. Everything within reason. I understand
the game, I see the tapes. When Tigana comes with an idea, I know what he
is looking for. He goes to bed at one o'clock, two o'clock in the morning
after watching videos from everywhere. It's unbelievable what he is doing.
At Motspur Park he's looking at 100 youngsters. Some of them are really
going to be great champions of Britain.
"That is our future. In England today there are 75% foreigners playing football.
I understand why. When you look at this guy [Gianfranco] Zola, it's fun
and it's fantastic quality. When you see Louis Saha, it's exciting. But
from the top, like from the bloody MI5 or MI6, all you get from the FA is
secrets. They are only cashing in, not supporting or funding the clubs in
the First Division or Second Division who are suffering."
But Fulham no longer are. For years the Cottagers, a hard core of fans as
permanent a fixture as the 19th-century building that still serves as the
club's main office, existed in the shadow of Chelsea, never mind Manchester
United.
And on home match days, when al-Fayed ritually walks out of the tunnel,
into the adrenaline rush of the crowd's applause, the populist paymaster
pressing the flesh, those supporters know it is a scarcely believable chapter
in Fulham's history.
They have shed their suspicion of the Pharaoh who came promising them the
gift of parity with the neighbours. They think he will stay, but even if
he does not, the adventure has been irreplaceable in their lives. The fans
who stand, at least until they are made to sit down when the ground is redeveloped
from next May, sing two new songs: "We're Not Real Madrid", which is a homage
to Chairman Mo; and a ditty that runs "Ti-gan-a! Ti-gan-a! Ti-gan-a!" to
the tune of La Marseillaise. And, as supporters do, they capture
the essence of what is happening. Fulham have two driving forces: the benefactor
who runs a shop round the corner at Knightsbridge; and the manager who chews
on a toothpick while raising standards on the pitch. The first coming, of
course, was Kevin Keegan, but when al-Fayed declared that he would give
up his charismatic team-builder "for the nation", he shopped abroad.
Al-Fayed took counsel from those he trusts in the game. He refuses to say
who directed him towards Tigana, the aggressor in the fabulous French quartet
of Tigana, Alain Giresse, Michel Platini and Luis Fernandez in the 1980s.
Some say it was Eric Cantona, but the owner says that although Cantona did
come to see him, and was interested in the job, his view was not decisive.
Tigana was summoned to Harrods. The chairman and the prospective manager
spoke mainly in French. The one-time street boy from Alexandria, and one
raised on the streets of Marseilles had, al-Fayed says, a chemistry. "Tigana
said to me, 'Shake hands, I'm coming, I'm your man'."
He still is. Not just Tigana, but, crucially, Christian Damiano, Tigana's
mentor at the school of French football. To appreciate that Tigana is young
and headstrong and dependent on his own team is insider football knowledge.
"I told him, 'Bring your Professor Damiano. Bring all your people, your
physician, everybody; bec-ause then you have no excuses'," says al-Fayed.
Al-Fayed sells Tigana's own white wine from Provence at Harrods, although
he admits he once told Keegan not to venture into football cafes but to
stick to managing. And he told Keegan bluntly what he thought of Ray Wilkins
(or Wilkinson or Wilson, whatever name comes to mind) because he blames
the coach Keegan hired for two lost years of progress at Fulham.
Speaking of progress, where will Fulham play next season while Craven Cottage
is being modernised? Loftus Road, Upton Park, even Stamford Bridge? "It
is up to Tigana. He is the guy. I pay the bills; the manager has to live
in the stadium. He likes to relax the players, to bring them to the ground
early to eat, to train, to prepare. Where we go is up to Tigana. The business
depends on the team."
Al-Fayed has a helicopter to catch. We part with this thought. There are
no shareholders in his companies. "I'm the boss," he confirms, "only me,
and God. We're doing our best."
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