Former Manchester City striker Imre Varadi has described the sight of the club’s supporters waving inflatable bananas at Anfield on Sunday as “brilliant”, saying it “brought a lot of fun back” to the game.
Varadi was nicknamed ‘Imre Banana’ by City fans during his two-year spell at the club in the late 1980s, and it was during that period that supporters began taking inflatable bananas to matches while City were playing in the old Second Division. The craze carried on into the early 1990s, with bananas reappearing at games intermittently in the years since, and dozens of them resurfaced in the away end on Sunday.
Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live Drive, Varadi said: “It was amazing, [it’s] bringing a lot of fun back into the game. The game itself was a terrific game obviously but just to see the inflatable craze coming back from the 80s when I was playing at the old Maine Road, it was a joy.”
The match itself saw City win 3-0 at Liverpool, their first outing since being found guilty of 114 charges related to breaches of Premier League financial rules between 2009-10 and 2017-18. With the club facing potential sanctions including a points deduction or expulsion from the Premier League, supporters took the bananas to Anfield as a nod to City’s time as a yo-yo club during the 1980s.
Varadi joined City from West Brom in October 1986 and scored 26 goals in 65 appearances before moving to Sheffield Wednesday in September 1988. He now sells inflatable bananas through the club, and his X account carries the handle @imre_banana.
Reflecting on how the tradition began, he added: “Somebody started to call me Imre Banana and then, the following game, there were 10, 20, 25 bananas and then it just grew and grew and grew until every football club had an inflatable. I started it but it was 40 years ago and it’s still going strong now, as we all saw at Anfield. I’m really proud of it. It’s bringing a lot of joy to the game. It’s great to see.”