The common word on the lips of the Fulham fans outside Craven Cottage stadium yesterday was “shocking”. No one, young or old, male or female, hesitated to express their horror at the news that the club’s former owner, Mohamed Al Fayed, who died last year, has been accused of being a serial rapist and sexual abuser.
Yet as Anna Davies, attending the game with her son Evan, put it: “I was shocked when I watched [the BBC investigation, Al Fayed: Predator at Harrods] but equally I wasn’t surprised.”
She drew the distinction, she explained, because while Fayed had “been a massive part of Fulham, in the fabric of the club, there are so many stories nowadays of abuse of power, people of status using their position to groom and abuse young women”.
This lowered expectation of public figures was echoed, in various ways, by a number of other supporters, who have grown used to distressing exposés of powerful men like Harvey Weinstein and Jimmy Savile, as well as sordid revelations about once-respected figures such as Huw Edwards.
Further along the Johnny Haynes stand, where the Newcastle United supporters were queueing, the chant went up among visiting fans: “Al Fayed was a rapist.”
Hayley Tinson, a Fulham fan who was with her parents and two siblings, was disappointed by that show of insensitivity towards the victims of the former Harrods and Fulham FC owner.
“I’m really hoping that today the fans will be respectful of the women who suffered at his hands,” she said.
Her brother, who did not want to be named, was less optimistic. “Football is about escapism,” he said. “People tend to leave their morality at the door.”
After all, he was quick to point out, Newcastle is a club that is 85%-owned by the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund, which is controlled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a man who is widely believed to have commissioned the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, as well as running a harsh dictatorship in Saudi.
At nearby Chelsea, the previous owner Roman Abramovich remains a hero to many fans, despite his close ties to Vladimir Putin, due to the notable success he brought to the club (largely thanks to the billions he extracted from Russia’s corrupt economic and political system).
Nor has there been a shortage of rogues and scoundrels elsewhere in the Premier League and lower divisions. But the game continues to flourish, its global appeal ever-expanding, with most fans more interested in the defender on the right than defending human rights.
Fayed, who owned Fulham from 1997 to 2013, was long known as a man with a chequered past, accused of mammoth fraud in his purchase of Harrods, renowned for his outlandish conspiracy theories about the royal family, and investigated by the police in 2015 over allegations of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl.
Nonetheless in this genteel corner of west London he enjoyed considerable popularity for taking Fulham from the lowly reaches of the old Third Division up to the glamorous heights of the Premiership. Even his embarrassing eccentricities – a devotion to Michael Jackson that led to a statue of the controversial pop star being built at Craven Cottage – were largely overlooked because of the boost he gave to the club (as well as his own coffers: he bought it for £30m and sold it for between £150m and £200m).
“He is – or was – an icon,” said Trevor Clark, at the turnstiles.
Fulham fans have continued to sing songs about their former owner, who famously was denied British citizenship. One is sung to the tune of Volare, and includes the less than poetic lyrics: “He wants to be a Brit / And QPR are shit.” Another is sung to Country Roads, and asks Fayed to take supporters home to Craven Cottage.
Clark was not alone in wanting those songs to be retired.
Alan Rawlison is 86 and has been supporting the club since 1947. He shook hands with Fayed at the first game after he bought the club.
“Those were bright times,” he recalled. Yet he had been speaking to a friend who worked for the club, he said, and had been told that there were stories from women who were employed by Harrods and Fulham that were “rather disturbing”.
Gaute Haugenes, Fulham’s women’s football manager between 2001 and 2003, has already said that female players had to be “protected” from Fayed, because he “liked young, blond girls”.
Martin Lee, attending with his father, Jack, acknowledged that the revelations about Fayed were “awful” but he said that up until last week there had been a lot of respect for the man, and he thought some fans would still sing the Fayed chants, although “in time they will die out”.
Like Savile, Fayed himself died out – at the age of 94 – without ever facing justice for his alleged crimes. No doubt the people who helped protect him will now deny all knowledge of his actions. However, the Fulham fans must now know enough to realise that their onetime saviour was really no one to sing about.
