For those of you who missed out on our coverage of the Michael Jackson statue being installed outside the ground of Fulham FC by its chairman and stout autocrat Mohammaed Al-Fayed, here’s the background for this one. Al-Fayed is the owner and chairman of Fulham FC, he bought the club for his son, who died in a car crash with Princess Diana in the late 1990’s. It was very sad, and as result, he won’t sell on the club for which he doesn’t seem to show a lot of interest in. Or at least that was the story until this spring, when Al-Fayed unveiled a full color plastic looking statue of a his good friend Michael Jackson. Jackson, who by all accounts didn’t attend more than one Fulham match, is now forever associated with the club, and his memory will live on forever. Or so Al-Fayed seems to hope.
Obviously, this god-awful statue has been greeted with a mixture of scorn and disbelief by supporters as he stands next the clubs footballing legends, but if you’re a autocrat, who cares what the fans think, its you’re club after all. Anyway, the latest saga in this torrid affair came today as the official Fulham club store began selling these stomach turning fashion atrocities immortalizing the friendship between these two men, and the statue itself, along side the soccer jerseys.
So here’s to Fulham….creepy mausoleum and English football club….
God help their supporters….