“I am ‘Imre Banana’. I wore the No 9. I played for Man City and I scored goals,” Imre Varadi says with a chuckle. These are extraordinary times for the 67-year-old former striker turned agent, who was sitting on his couch a couple of years ago, recovering from a toe operation, when he had a brainwave.

It is all to do with inflatable bananas. There has been a huge resurgence in the craze among Manchester City fans since the club were found guilty of 100-plus charges for breaking the Premier League’s financial rules.

“I started the company in 2024,” Varadi explains. “It was coming to the end of the season and City were winning everything. They paraded the cups and the Premier League and there were inflatable bananas. For many years I thought ‘I should have done this. I should have started this company’. And I just thought ‘it’s never too late’. So I set up the company and trademarked my name.

“It was for the fans, and then Anfield two Sundays ago and what’s gone off with City and the charges and everything, it’s just gone crazy. I’ve had orders from everywhere. We’ve sold thousands. Unbelievable.”

City themselves have bought 11,000 and are believed to be ordering another 30,000. Phil Foden was even carrying one during his post-match interview last Saturday, after the 3-2 win over Ipswich Town. “I saw that and it makes me feel great,” Varadi says. “And I know Enzo Maresca was saying that he’s got four sons and they’ve all been asking about having a banana. Last year the club asked me if I could bring 10 bananas down for Oasis.”

That is because Varadi has the trademark on the “Imre Banana” – the official inflatable endorsed by City and Puma which goes back to his own playing days. He even has his own website, ImreBanana.com.

Varadi recalls: “It started in 1987. Maine Road. Scored a lot of goals for them. Then for one game a fan called Frank Newton came along with an inflatable banana. It was the first one. Then someone started to call me ‘Imre Banana’. Then there were 10 bananas, 15, 25, and it grew.

“It went through all the clubs that season. West Ham had inflatable hammers. Grimsby had inflatable fish. Norwich had an inflatable canary. It was a sight to see.”

City were in the old second division having been relegated and were beginning a descent that would plummet them even further. But when times are tough, they laugh. “Gallows humour,” as the Manchester Evening News called the inflatable banana craze in the Eighties to cope with the poor performances. Now it is for a different reason.

“It’s like the fans are saying ‘We’ve had that fall to the third division. We’ve been there. We know what it’s like to get out of this’,” Varadi says. “It’s for fun and a little bit of defiance. These charges are hanging over City and the fans are coming out with ‘whatever happens, we will support our great club’. I get that.

“It’s galvanised the fans with the players [and] the club. The sea of bananas. It’s an incredible sight. The club wants everybody in the stadium to hold [one].”

But his name does not actually rhyme with banana? “I know,” Varadi says, laughing. “Maybe it was because of the way my name was sung.”

Last Saturday, he and his family were guests of honour at the Etihad Stadium. Frank Newton was also there. It was the first time they had actually met. “I wasn’t sure he was still alive!” Varadi says. “I gave him my number. I’m going to speak to him this week. I’ve got to find out his story. I think he borrowed a big 10-foot banana from a friend and just took it to the game.”

Varadi had joined City 10 games into the 1986-87 season, for £50,000 from West Bromwich Albion, with the team struggling badly. He was top scorer with nine goals that campaign, a quarter of City’s total, but could not help keep them up.

“We had a great team. Mick McCarthy was captain. John Gidman was there. Myself, Paul Stewart, and then we had the youngsters coming through – Steve Redmond, Paul Lake,” Varadi recalls. “But you know what it’s like. If you don’t start the season well, which they didn’t, you find yourself at the bottom and under pressure. It’s hard to get out. Unfortunately, we got relegated.”

Varadi had signed a two-year deal and stayed to try to gain immediate promotion. It did not happen, despite him scoring 31 times in 81 games during his City career, and he left to rejoin Sheffield Wednesday (he had first played for them between 1983-85) under Howard Wilkinson.

“I’m very close with Howard now. I live 10 minutes away from him [in Sheffield]. I still go to his house. I get on my bike and pedal up, ring his doorbell,” Varadi says. “I still call him Gaffer or Howard sometimes, but mainly Gaffer. We sit down in his kitchen and talk about the old times.

“Before I signed, I said ‘Howard, you are not going to Leeds United, are you?’ because there was talk he would and he said ‘no, I’m not going to leave’. So, I signed and he left a couple of weeks later!”

Eventually Wilkinson came in for Varadi again, wanting him at Leeds. “But there’s a story with that one as well,” Varadi says. “I’d agreed a three-year deal to go to Celtic. So I get a phone call from Howard and I’m literally in the car on my way to Glasgow. I had a mobile phone – I was quite posh! – and Howard rings me and goes, ‘Raymondo, I want you to come to Leeds’.

“I went ‘Gaffer, I’ve just agreed a three-year deal with Celtic’ and he said ‘Raymondo, you’re not. You’re coming here’. And I said, ‘What’s the deal then?’

“We did the deal. Then I had to ring [Celtic manager] Billy McNeill. So that wasn’t good. But you know, it was three times the money, and it was Howard and I lived in Sheffield.”

At Leeds, Varadi won the second division and was in the squad that was the last to win the old first division, before it became the Premier League. But because he only played three league games – in those days a player had to make 10 appearances – he was denied a winner’s medal.

“I think all players nowadays get a medal. Maybe I should write to the Premier League!” Varadi says. “But I was part of it. I would have loved to have a medal. Now coaches [and] managers get the medals. The physios as well.”

Varadi had something of a journeyman career. Why did he move around so much?

“I’ll tell you why,” he says. “I was always in demand. Take Newcastle. I signed a three-year deal. After two seasons, Arthur Cox said, ‘We’ve had a phone call from Sheffield Wednesday [the first time he joined in 1983]. We’ve accepted the bid. We want you to go and talk to them’.

“I said ‘Arthur, I’m not going anywhere. I love it here. I’m staying’. The next day, he made me a big offer to leave. I said ‘No’. And the offer kept going up and up. Now on the fifth time of them telling me I’d better go I accepted. And then in trots a player called Peter Beardsley who did very well. So, it worked out great.

“I played for fantastic clubs. Newcastle was brilliant. I played 90 games and scored 42 goals, wearing the No 9. I remember going to a big awards night up at Newcastle and all the great No 9s were on the top table. Alan Shearer, Malcolm Macdonald and they invited me. I sat on the end because I felt inferior to them all.

“There were 500 people there, dickie bows, really plush. Shearer came up to me and said: ‘Imre, it’s Alan. Can I ask you something? Do you remember two kids knocking at your door for your autograph?’

“And I say ‘yes’ and he said that he was one of them. ‘Little s---!’ I said. ‘When I gave you my autograph, you promised me that you wouldn’t tell your schoolmates where I lived. The next day, there were 25 kids at my door!’ I said ‘I am a football agent now. I should get your autograph’.

“And then I played with Kevin Keegan. I made his first goal. Had a season with him. I scored 22 goals. He scored 20. I think I almost scored 200 goals [in my career]. I played for 18 years, had 16 clubs. I enjoyed every minute.”

Before Newcastle there were two years at Everton. “I played in a derby against Liverpool, scored the winning goal in the FA Cup. I [put] it in the top corner past Ray Clemence. I lost it. I’m about 20, 21. I’m celebrating behind the goal and then I realise after a few seconds it was the Liverpool end and someone throws a meat and potato pie and it hits me right in the middle of the face. I can still taste it,” Varadi says, laughing again.

He played in an era when there were so many outstanding No 9s. “We used to play 4-4-2. There are two wingers on the pitch. I would love to have played with [Erling] Haaland up front,” he says. “But they don’t put two up front anymore. Pep [Guardiola] came in and revolutionised it. The goalkeepers are now centre-halves, the centre-halves come into the six-yard box to receive the ball, the full-backs go out wide. It’s the modern way now.

“Can you imagine Shearer playing nowadays? A winger gets the ball and he’s gone past the full-back but checked out and he’s not got in an early ball. He’d get a mouthful. In our day, as a striker, you wanted the early ball.”

Varadi is certainly not bitter. “I’m not one of those. Not at all. I enjoyed my career. I loved it, and, you know, good luck to them,” he says. “And being an agent, I’ve done OK and I still love what I do now.”

Not least with the inflatable banana revival. “It’s endless. What I love about it is it’s the next generation of kids coming through. There’s no end to it. It’s been going for 40 years, so it will go for another 40,” Varadi says.