LONDON – The uniformed doorman at Harrods, in London’s well-to-do Knightsbridge area, checks out all customers who enter through its doors. Those carrying backpacks or wearing scruffy sportsgear can expect to be turned away, for this is one of the world’s most exclusive department stores and its owner wants only discerning individuals of good taste purchasing his caviar and quail’s eggs.
The owner, of course, is Mohammed Al Fayed, self-made multimillionaire and father of the late Princess Diana’s good friend Dodi. He’s not an especially popular figure, perhaps because he is a symbol of the kind of wealth and privilege that the British generally resent, but to fans of Fulham Football Club he can do no wrong.
In the mid-90s, Al Fayed acquired Fulham for a pittance, in the way that regular folks would go out and buy a high mileage second hand car. And just like a rickety old auto, Fulham, whose curiously named Craven Cottage Stadium sits beside the River Thames, had seen better days.
The club slipped out of what was then called the first division, nowadays the Premier league, in the early ’70s and spent the next 20-odd years sliding ever closer to obscurity. Al Fayed bought the club as a reclamation project and set about rebuilding its foundations, initially dumping the coach, an honest but limited workhorse named Mickey Adams, and replacing him at great expense with the high-profile Kevin Keegan.
Keegan had only recently walked away from Newcastle of the Premier division in a disagreement over the availability of cash for new players. Here, at a club two divisions down, he was given an open checkbook. It was a formula that could hardly fail to work: players who would normally be reluctant to strut their stuff outside the top division needed little persuasion to work with the respected Keegan, especially when all their salary demands were met so generously.
Fulham marched triumphantly up the ladder, ruthlessly disposing of certain players when they had served their purpose and bringing in more gifted artisans to replace them. Even when Keegan was poached to take over the English national squad (on whom he also walked out after a gloomy loss to Germany a few months back), progress at the club remained steady. Al Fayed called his agreement to release Keegan “my gift to the nation” but the gesture still didn’t win him his long sought-after British citizenship.
Last spring Fulham gate crashed the first division, one rung below the elite, and Al Fayed decided it was time to do some luxury shopping of his own. He again dispensed with the coach, Paul Bracewell, who had stepped up after serving as Keegan’s assistant, and recruited wily Frenchman Jean Tigana, mainstay of France’s awesome midfield of the early ’80s and equally astute coaching Monaco.
Though something of a rookie coach, Tigana had all the right credentials -for one thing, his nationality, French coaches being the must-have of the moment for any English club with serious ambition. There was also the prestige factor, with Tigana’s international pedigree sure to attract the right kind of player.
It could have taken some time for still another set of new players to familiarize themselves with Tigana’s methods – but from day one of this season, which has just past the halfway point, his appointment has looked a master stroke. On Tuesday Fulham blitzed Watford 5-0 to move a staggering 10 points clear of its nearest pursuer at the top of the division with just one loss so far in 24 games.
It is a record-breaking pace – the club is just about certain to top the century in terms of both points and goals scored. Ironically, Watford had been Fulham’s nearest rival until last month, when a string of losses sent the club plummeting down the standings. But for the league leader the only way is up, and Premier league status for next season is almost guaranteed already.
The club’s leading scorer is Luis Saha, a dreadlocked Frenchman (surprise) whose pace is simply too much for your average first division fullback clogger. Even on those rare occasions when Saha fails to deliver he has plenty of backup, including his strikemate Barry Hayles, who rattled up a hat trick in the Watford game this week.
Squad members are barred from pubs and clubs for the entire season – not that they’re complaining, with their mission promising to be accomplished way ahead of schedule. Clearly, whatever Tigana instructs them, it is highly effective.
Al Fayed has honored his coach by introducing a white wine named Domaine LaDona Tigana on sale in Harrods. His gift to the players was typically extravagant, a box of gold-wrapped chocolate bricks sent to the locker room.
Other clubowners have come in and simply thrown their money into a black hole, firing the coach they hired with such high hopes no better off than when they started. But in common with his store’s philosophy Al Fayed has gone in only for the finer things, and for that he is reaping rich rewards.