Barry Hayles has paid an emotional tribute to former Fulham chairman Mohamed Al Fayed, who passed away last week, saying that the Egyptian entrepreneur transformed his life.
The former Harrods tycoon took over London’s oldest professional football club shortly after their promotion from the Third Division in 1997 and unveiled a five-year plan to take the Whites back to the top flight. He did it in four season and Hayles, who had been scoring plenty of lower-league goals for Bristol Rovers, played a pivotal part in the club’s rise – scoring 57 goals in 215 games after making a £2m move from the Memorial Ground in November 1998.
Hayles told the Daily Star:
“He transformed my life really. I think my transfer was a record between clubs in the division and I’d heard about the chairman, but only because he owned Harrods. He used to come in the changing rooms before games at home and he’d always ask: ‘Have we got big balls today boys?’ We realised it was him getting his players ready to go to war, but initially it was quite a shock – especially when you’d just signed.
The Fulham cult hero detailed his chairman’s generosity, with several gifts arriving for the club’s successful players as they rose through the divisions.
“He started handing these pills out on one occasion and I had no idea what they were, the boys were saying: ‘You know what these are for?” They said they were Viagra and I couldn’t believe it, but that was just him. We were told that we were getting gold bars worth millions but we then realised they were chocolates, which he thought was hilarious. I don’t think anyone else had a chairman who would walk around the pitch before matches and wave a flag around his head without fail, he was upstairs but hands on at the same time.”
Hayles also revealed that he became close to Al-Fayed’s youngest son Karim, who considered the Jamaican international his favourite player.
“I was quite close with his younger son. We used to have chats in the changing room before games when he came along and he enjoyed it. He’d always say you’re my favourite player and we’d sit close together because of his hearing difficulty. That was a nice memory of him and Al-Fayed being so close to the club.”
