If you remember, good friend and Fulham FC’s former Chairman Mohamed Al-Fayed commissioned a tribute statue of the King of Pop in 2011. The statue was set at the club’s stadium where it stood for two-and-a-half years.
When the football club was sold in 2013, the new owner Shahid Khan decided to remove the statue saying “I respect Mr Al Fayed and know he had good intentions in paying an individual. However, the removal of the statue is the right thing for Fulham Football Club.”
Al-Fayed got the statue back and was looking for a new home for his tribute statue, to be publicly displayed.
In 2014, the National Football Museum in Manchester approached Al-Fayed: “When the museum approached me, I hesitated because the statue means a great deal to me and my family. But on reflection, I decided that the statue of Michael should go to the place where it can be enjoyed by the greatest number of people.” said Al-Fayed.
The statue was on display at the museum for 4 years until the mockumentary “Leaving Neverland” was aired in 2019.
Despite the Museum spoke person saying this removal had nothing to do with the “movie”, it seems too coincidental: “Plans have been underway for a number of months to remove the Michael Jackson Statue from display as part of our ongoing plans to better represent the stories we want to tell about football. As a result of this, the statue has now been removed.”
We are now in 2023 and still no sign of the statue on the Museum’s floor. Asked about the whereabout of the statue, the spokesperson said: “The Statue is still in the care of the museum, up in our storage archives at Deepdale”.
It seems that the museum has no plans to re-install the statue to the museum floor. We have contacted the museum for some clarifications and the replied: “The statue currently remains in our Deepdale storage archive in Preston. There are no current plans to return the statue to display.”
SOURCE: National Football Museum
