The Fancy (archaic)
"The fancy" to describe avid sports enthusiasts emerged as an Americanism in the mid-19th century. The term referring to the fans of a specific hobby or sport, most commonly applied to originally shortened to fance then just to the homonym fans.
The Great American Baseball Scrapbook attributes the term to Chris von der Ahe, owner of the Saint Louis Brown Stockings in 1882. Von der Ahe sold tickets for 25 cents, hoping the many patrons would purchase his beer; the low ticket price helped him lead the stats in attendance. He called the fanatics filling his stands "fans".[5]
Fancy (v)
"take a liking to," 1540s, a contraction of fantasien "to fantasize (about)," from fantasy (n.)
It is also used to describe attitude or desire: Do you fancy a coffee?
In British English this evolved into describing physical attraction to someone/something.
e.g: He likes her but she doesn't fancy him.