Franck Ribery produces a masterclass against Juventus

It’s been over a-year-and-half since Franck Ribery ripped his shirt off in delight after scoring a peach of a goal against Eintracht Frankfurt in his last home game for Bayern Munich (which yours truly was lucky enough to witness live in the stadium). After celebrating his final days at Bayern by winning the double, our Franck left Munich for Florence, settling in at ACF Fiorentina.

From then on, Ribery has enjoyed success in Italy as well, being voted Fiorentina’s player of the year last season and making Bayern fans proud as well. This season, he has four assists in twelve league games so far, and he showed that he still has it by recording one against defending champions Juventus.

Barely three minutes had passed when Ribery got the ball in his own half and sent a pinpoint through ball into Juve’s defense, finding Dusan Vlahovic to open the scoring. A classy assist from a classy player.

That assist was the only one that Ribery would get that night, but his game was far from over. In the second half, he bamboozled three defenders into thinking he was going to shoot, but instead found teammate Cristiano Biraghi on the far side in acres of space. The resulting cross went in off Alex Sandro’s boot to put Fiorentina two up.

Finally, Ribery snuck up on an unsuspecting Leonardo Bonucci to tap the ball away from him, which started the buildup for Martin Caceres’ goal. It was the icing on the cake for Fiorentina, almost run and managed entirely by the magic Frenchman.

Ribery thus bossed the game against Juventus and showed Cristiano Ronaldo who was the best number 7 in the business. Legend has it that Ronaldo was so impressed with Ribery’s masterclass that he gave him the Ballon d’Or that he should have won in 2013.

By the way, Ribery did all that at 37 years old. Wow.