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When Manchester City hosted Ipswich Town over the weekend, the home fans had a unique prop to hold aloft: yellow inflated bananas. So popular have these inflated bananas become that Manchester City star Phil Foden even carried one to do his post-match broadcast interview.
Man City fans had also taken the prop with them to the away game at Liverpool, where the Anfield faithful let Manchester City know just what they thought about City being found guilty on 114 charges of breaching the Premier League’s financial rules. City have been held guilty of multiple offences between 2009-10 and 2017-18 seasons. A report on BBC Sport said that the club entered into ‘sham contracts’ to inflate sponsorship deals by £830 million so that it could circumvent financial fairplay rules.
But why are fans of Manchester City using these yellow inflated bananas?
The origin story of these bananas goes back to the late 1980s. This was much before Manchester City was bankrolled by Abu Dhabi’s large coffers. In the 80s, Manchester City were constantly in transit between the top two divisions of the English league. They would play their home games at Maine Road at the time.
According to the Associated Press, back in those days Manchester City had a striker called Imre Varadi. A fan favorite, Varadi earned the nickname ‘Imre Banana’ from supporters. No one quite knows the origin story of the nickname. But to honour him, City fans would bring large, inflatable bananas to home games to lighten the mood amid tough times, starting in the 1987-88 season when City was back in the second tier after relegation.
Now that Manchester City are facing bleak times again with sanctions pending from the Premier League for the 114 breaches of financial fair play, their fans have brought back the bananas as a throwback.
“I always had one of these [bananas] when I was in the stadium. Quite clutch,” Foden told BBC in the interview after the win over Ipswich.
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In Friday’s pre-match press conference too, the question of the yellow bananas came up. Manchester City’s new manager Enzo Maresca said he wants to see “many bananas” in the stands at games. The fans delivered!
(With inputs from AP)
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