On a rainy Saturday afternoon in February 1996, the Craven Cottage scoreboard read Fulham 2-2 Hartlepool. The draw left the home side 91st in the Football League, in serious danger of going bust. London’s oldest professional football club – once home to such luminaries as Johnny Haynes, Alan Mullery, Bobby Moore and George Best – was now on the brink of oblivion.
There may not have been a less alluring proposition for a billionaire investor. That’s precisely why Mohamed Al Fayed, an Egyptian businessman who had risen from selling Coca-Cola on the streets of Alexandria to owning Knightsbridge department store Harrods, was talking to Chelsea and Manchester United instead. When it transpired that their owners were seeking only minor investment, he headed back to the drawing board.
It was just as well, then, that by the time Al Fayed returned to the market a year later, Fulham had turned a corner courtesy of player-manager Micky Adams. Weeks after that Hartlepool nadir, the Cottagers defender replaced Ian Branfoot in the dugout and moved the club away from the trap door to non-league. In 1996-97, he guided Fulham to promotion in his first full season in charge.
At that point, Al Fayed made his move. Dubbed the ‘Phoney Pharaoh’ by satirical magazine Private Eye for the self-appointed aristocratic ‘Al’ he attached to his surname in the 1970s, he bought a 70 per cent stake in the club for £6.5 million on May 29, 1997. He also purchased the freehold to Craven Cottage from the Royal Bank of Scotland.
“I’m committed, both personally and financially, to the revival of this club,” said the then 68-year-old. “I’m putting in £30m, but that’s just the minimum stake. Myself and Harrods will do anything to help get into the Premier League.”
Al Fayed set a bold target of taking Fulham into the top flight in just five years. In the end, he did it in four.
