Brotherly feuds appear to run in the Gallagher family and help to explain how Oasis' deep association with Manchester City began.
“My dad hated his brothers," Noel Gallagher explained in 2000, in a piece for the Guardian marking City's return to the top-flight. “They were all Irish people who came over here and decided to support [Manchester] United. My dad chose City instead, just to piss them off. No other reason than that.”
Noel's first game with his dad, Thomas, was City's 5-1 thrashing of Newcastle United at Maine Road in 1971. “That was it,” he wrote. “City became my team.”
Liam, who was born the following year, has said he was never taken to City by his dad, but a teacher at St Bernard’s school in Burnage, a Mr Walsh, occasionally took pupils to matches, sparking the younger Gallagher brother's love for the club.
Today, Noel and Liam, who this week announced an Oasis reunion UK tour next year, are City's most famous superfans and regulars at the Etihad Stadium, where 'Wonderwall' is an unofficial club anthem.
After his first experience of City, Noel could soon be found at Maine Road every other weekend, leaning on the back of the old Kippax Stand, attempting to start chants, which he has said were the "first seeds of my songwriting".
He later revealed he would hang around with City hooligan groups The Guv’nors and The Maine Line Service Crew as a teenager.
Noel estimates he barely missed a home game between the ages of 12 and 21, and as Oasis' fame grew in the '90s, the band become almost synonymous with the club, the brothers' association with City immortalised by Kevin Cummins' 1994 famous shoot of the pair in that season's shirts.
The link between City and Oasis was strengthened by two iconic gigs at Maine Road, on April 27 and 28, 1996, later described by Creation Records boss Alan McGee as a “religious spectacle”, and helping to cement Oasis's status as one of the biggest bands in the world.
“I'm hoping City'll get relegated to the third division so I can buy the club for about a million quid or something like that,” Noel said at the time, reflecting City's continued struggles and Oasis' rising wealth and status.
The brothers were both at Wembley for City's legendary comeback win over Gillingham in the Division Two play-off Final (so their return to the national stadium for three gigs in July next year is unlikely to be their happiest memory of the ground).Noel revealed beforehand that he had to stay sober throughout because they were playing that evening at the Forum in Kentish Town.
Despite Noel's prediction in 1995 that he would never see City win a major trophy in his lifetime, Abu Dhabi's takeover of the club in 2008, and particularly the appointment of Pep Guardiola as head coach nine years ago, has made City the dominant force in English football.
Liam was in captain Vincent Kompany’s box at the Etihad as City were crowned champions for the first time in his life in May 2012, though Noel was forced to watch Sergio Aguero's last-gasp winner from a deserted bar in Santiago, Chile, where he was on tour with his band, High Flying Birds.
“I swore a lot and then I cried like a baby because I’ve never seen anything like that before. It was mindblowing,” he later said.
Though they have not been pictured at a game together for many years, both brothers have continued to go regularly, with Noel still a fixture at away games, particularly in London.
While Liam has occasionally railed against the club's newfound success - saying in 2020, “I don’t dig it man, it’s like going and watching the fucking opera” - but today Noel is something of an unofficial City mascot, often paraded on the Etihad pitch, pictured with Guardiola and found leading singalongs in the dressing room after significant milestones.
“My theory is you can’t have Oasis and City doing well at the same time because that’s greedy,” Liam said in 2000.
“It was the same for the [Stone] Roses. When they got back, United went downhill.
“I was going to Mani: ‘You can’t have the both. Whilst you’re selling out stadiums your team is going down the pan. I’ve been there.’”
Since Oasis broke up backstage at the French music festival Rock en Seine in 2009, City have won seven Premier League titles - four more than any other club in the same period - and claimed an history Treble last season as part of an unprecedented spell of dominance.
As the band prepares to return to huge fanfare and sell-out crowds next summer, the question is therefore whether City, who face an historic hearing against 115 charges of breaking the Premier League's rules this year, will still be at the top when they do.
