Ask any Manchester City fan about Uwe Rosler’s Grandad – they’ll all have the same answer.
Hailing from Altenburg, East Germany, Rosley, who turned 56 last Friday (November 16), turned out for City between 1994 and 1998. In that time he racked up 158 appearances for Manchester United’s noisy neighbours.
Rosler didn’t have the best of starts, when he was sent off in an opening day 3-0 defeat to Arsenal – but he soon found his way into City hearts. “When I moved to City in 1994, it was a perfect fit,” he explained to BILD.
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“I was the first German on the island after many years and was initially viewed with suspicion. With my open, honest and emotional style of play, I won the affection of the fans.”
And it wasn’t long until his name was being sung from the terraces of Maine Road: “Uwe’s Grandad bombed the Stretford End,” they chanted. City even had the chant – that was a light-hearted and entirely fictitious – printed on t-shirts.
(Image: Getty Images)
“I still have it framed in my apartment. I like English humour,” Rosler told the German outlet when asked about the chant.
Rosler further opened up about the t-shirt in his autobiography, Knocking Down Walls: “The first time I saw a T-shirt with ‘Uwe’s grandad bombed Old Trafford’, I had to smile.
“I was learning English and both understood and enjoyed English humour so I totally got it. The German media were quick to pick up on it and I was being told that I couldn’t allow that to happen and that they were making fun of our country’s history.
(Image: Mirrorpix)
“I was interviewed for one paper and they said I must be upset and depressed about what was happening and I told them I was anything but. Totally the opposite in fact.
“I told them it was just English humour, that’s the way it was and it was nothing more than harmless fun. There were 5,000 T-shirts printed and they sold the lot so it was a good idea by somebody!
“Besides, if I hadn’t been accepted as one of their own, I don’t think there’s anyway those T-shirts would have appeared. By this time, I’d also been given the nickname ‘Der Bomber’ in the Manchester Evening News which was very flattering.
“Gerd Muller was the original Der Bomber but I couldn’t compare myself with him – nowhere near, to be honest – but I liked it. Who wouldn’t?”