Why Manchester City fans are bringing back inflatable bananas? And what's their meaning?
Manchester City fans displayed dozens of inflatable bananas during their last two matches in the Premier League against Liverpool and Ipswich Town. It is not something you see very often inside a football stadium, but the gesture carries considerable symbolic weight for City supporters. It is a form of protest rooted in the club's history, a tradition revived to demonstrate their loyalty to the team at a moment of extreme uncertainty while also taking the mickey out of rival supporters enjoying City's troubles in the purest spirit of schadenfreude.
Why are Manchester City fans protesting?
Let's start with the protest itself. Manchester City supporters have brought back the inflatable bananas following the Premier League's decision to find the club guilty of financial misconduct. Without getting too deep into the details, the Premier League investigated potential financial breaches by Manchester City's ownership between 2009 and 2018, with the investigation running from 2018 to 2023. Last 25 September, after almost three years of waiting, the verdict finally came in, finding City guilty of 114 out of the 115 charges brought against them.
The sanctions against Manchester City have yet to be announced. Among the possible outcomes is the stripping of every title the club won in England during the period under investigation: three Premier League titles, one FA Cup, three League Cups and one Community Shield. Alongside the inevitable fines, other penalties could include a substantial points deduction in the current or next Premier League season, or even relegation. In short, the sanctions handed down by the Premier League could well spell the end of Manchester City as we know it today: a club with virtually unlimited spending power, backed by the City Football Group, led by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and able to sign almost any talented player it wants.
In response to this prospect, Manchester City fans decided to display dozens of inflatable bananas during the match against Liverpool at Anfield, the Citizens' first game since the verdict. It was a way of mocking the Premier League while trying to ward off their fears by bringing back a tradition passed down through generations of supporters.
Why do Manchester City fans bring inflatable bananas to matches?
The story has been reconstructed in detail by Roberto Gotta, one of Italy's leading journalists covering English football. The tradition dates back to 1987, when Manchester City supporter Frank Newton went to visit his friend Allen Busby, a collector. Among Busby's possessions, Newton spotted an inflatable banana and, after getting his friend's permission, decided to take it to the stadium for a match against Plymouth Argyle. The habit of bringing an inflatable banana to games caught on when a chant dedicated to Imre Varadi, a City striker at the time, became famous for its reference to a banana. And so the legend of the Imre Banana was born, and you can still buy one today for £10.
From that moment on, bananas became part of City's history, including the historic play-off final against Gillingham in 1999, which saw Manchester City return to the second tier after a painful relegation to the Third Division. It remains one of the matches City fans feel most attached to, marking a moment of joy after a long run of disappointments. Twenty-six years later, supporters can once again see darker days looming on the horizon. Perhaps that is precisely why they have decided to revive a tradition that, in one stroke, allows them to recognise fellow Citizens while taking the piss out of those hoping to see the club fall.
