Manchester City supporters are used to seeing a sea of blue in the stands. On Sunday 11 October, a wave of yellow rolled around Anfield instead, as hundreds of fans arrived clutching inflatable bananas.
The timing was hard to miss. It was City’s first match since the Premier League found the club guilty of 114 of the 115 charges it faced relating to financial fair play rules. The club has launched an appeal and strongly denies any wrongdoing, but it could still face a number of severe punishments.
Outside the ground, merchandise referencing the more than 100 charges was on sale. City supporters appeared to be ready for that kind of thing, and the bananas look like a playful reply.
Manager Enzo Maresca addressed the scandal for the first time on Friday 9 October, ahead of the Liverpool game. The 46-year-old said he had “complete trust” in the club. “Personally, I’m very calm to be honest,” he said. “The club has been quite clear. We trust completely the club.” He added: “We understand the noise, but the focus for us is just what we can control and we can control just the football side.”
Online, plenty of people were baffled. One asked, “Why are the Man City fans holding giant bananas?” Another cheered, “Bananas are backkkkk!” A third dismissed the travelling supporters as tourists having a laugh, while a fourth wrote, “My love for this club is pure.” A fifth joked that City fans seemed to be saying, “We know we cheated but we’re gonna come to Anfield and wave bananas around.”
The likely explanation goes back to 1987. As legend has it, a few City fans put a spin on the name of striker Imre Varadi, and they chanted “Imre Banana” for him. The club’s website says this marked the start of an “inflatable craze that put a much needed smile back on the face of football in England”. Varadi, now 67, later said he was extremely proud to have been connected to it. He went on to launch his own business, Imre Banana, which sells inflatable bananas bearing his name for £10, along with t-shirts and badges.
The trend is usually credited to a fan named Frank Newton, who turned up at Maine Road before a match against Plymouth Argyle with a five-foot blow-up banana borrowed from a pal. Dante Friend, who handed out inflatables to fans outside Anfield, told The Sun: “A guy called Frank Newton took an inflatable banana to the next game, and then everyone started doing it.” He added that when something is fan-led rather than club-led, bringing back the bananas “can be really good. It’ll be a laugh.”
Now the bananas are being repurposed as a show of solidarity. City’s chief executive, Ferran Soriano, recently released a video insisting the Premier League case was “based on a single false accusation”. Many viewers, however, were more struck by the fact that he seemed not to blink during the clip, which runs for more than three minutes.
Serious matters deserve serious attention, and the appeal will run its course. Still, there is something lovely about a stadium full of grown adults waving giant fruit. In a news cycle that can feel heavy, a bit of daft, inflatable silliness is a reminder that football can still make us laugh.