Back in Premier League action for the first time since being found guilty of serious financial rules breaches, Manchester City entered the pitch against Liverpool to a hostile reception from the Anfield faithful. Accusatory banners were unfurled, boos were audible, and chanting reverberated around the stadium.
Many traveling City fans answered with a defiant display of their own. The sight that drew the most quizzical looks was the large number of inflatable bananas being wielded in the away section. It was not a spur-of-the-moment call, nor a recent phenomenon. City fans have been taking inflatable bananas to games since the 1980s.
The practice dates back to the 1987-88 season, when the club had been relegated to the English second tier. One fan reportedly took a large inflatable banana to Maine Road to lighten the mood. The club had a popular striker, Imre Varadi, who spent two seasons with City and earned the affectionate nickname "Imre Banana" on the terraces. Bananas quickly became a fixture in the crowd, and the tradition has endured, if intermittently, for almost 40 years.
Bananas were commonplace at City matches through the 1980s and '90s but faded during the modern era, following the club's stadium change and takeover in the mid-2000s. Sunday's heated clash with Liverpool revived the trend, with hundreds of yellow plastic effigies bobbing in the Anfield Road Stand. While City were lambasted as "cheats" and threatened with potential relegation, their fans waved bananas as an eccentric homage to their days in the lower leagues.
Source: ESPN Soccer · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing