Manchester’s eastern edge turns its attention to Paris Saint-Germain tonight, but the Etihad may also carry an old, irreverent symbol from the club’s support: the oversized inflatable banana. After appearing among Manchester City fans at Anfield on Sunday, it could return for the Champions League visit of PSG as the club continues to contest findings over repeated financial rule breaches.
The news from the club
City are appealing after an independent panel found the club guilty of numerous financial irregularities. With no final sanction yet imposed, the team remain active in domestic and European competition, while their supporters have responded to the situation with a familiar strain of gallows humour.
That humour was especially visible in Liverpool, where City won 3-0 at Anfield. The home side were without Alexander Isak and Cody Gakpo, and Ryan Gravenberch’s dismissal further changed the course of the match. City’s players celebrated the third goal in front of their travelling fans, who were surrounded by the large bananas that have become part of the club’s terrace folklore.
Liverpool supporters answered with chants of “Cheats” and “going down”, while Anfield’s matchday music ended with Fleetwood Mac’s “Little Lies”. The afternoon brought a particularly sharp collision between City’s commanding result and the unresolved case hanging over the club.
The banana tradition reaches back almost four decades, to a single supporter at the former Maine Road stadium. What began as an improvised joke was adopted by fans during years when City were outside the top flight and watching Manchester United’s success from across the city. Inflatable bananas, and later other deliberately absurd giant animals, became a marker of self-mockery and a way of easing the tension that could surround English football grounds.
In the present context, the same image has acquired a harsher meaning for rival supporters. City’s wealth has helped assemble a side featuring Erling Haaland, Rayan Cherki and Jérémy Doku, and every emphatic win is now played against the backdrop of the pending disciplinary outcome. Until that process reaches its conclusion, the jokes in the away end and the anger around opposing stadiums are likely to accompany City on their travels.
Paris comes to the Etihad
PSG’s visit offers City another major European occasion, and potentially another setting for the supporters’ visual humour. Whether the inflatables appear again or not, the atmosphere will be shaped by two parallel stories: a high-level Champions League fixture and a club still waiting to learn the consequences of the financial case it is challenging.
For City, football continues while the appeal unfolds. For their opponents, each new victory carries the argument beyond the pitch, making the eventual decision increasingly important to the wider competitive balance of the game.
