10 years ago Franck Ribéry came to Munich. fcbayern.com looks back at some of his highlights.
7 June 2007 was a happy day for FC Bayern as new signing Franck Ribéry was presented. The 24 year-old Frenchman joined from Marseille and was given the number seven shirt, which had been worn by Bayern legend Mehmet Scholl in the previous season.
Thousands of fans and dozens of journalists came to Säbener Straße on 3 July 2007 for Franck Ribéry’s first training session at FC Bayern. The Frenchman showed immediately what he was capable of. Stefan Fürstner and Hamit Altintop struggled to contain the whirlwind.
After a year without a trophy, Bayern were back at the top at the end of the season. The Frenchman played a big part in this success, and grabbed the championship shield straight away and ran off with it.
In the 2007/08 season, Ribéry provided 11 goals and eight assists in 28 league games, as well as two goals and four assists in the DFB Cup as FCB won the double. For this, he was named German Footballer of the Year on 15 August 2008.
He’s been renowned for his jokes since day one. For example, he once poured a bucket of water over Oliver Kahn. And his bus tour at the training camp in Dubai in 2009, when ‘bus driver’ Ribéry damaged some signs, will never be forgotten.
“Five more years” was the cry from Ribéry to the Bayern fans during the double celebrations at Marienplatz on 23 May 2010, as Ribéry announced he’d extended his contract to 2015. Along with the two trophies, this was the best present for Bayern fans.
2013 was Ribéry’s most successful year. As well as the Bundesliga title and DFB Cup, Bayern also won the Champions League. Ribéry set up the winning goal in the final and got his hands on the trophy he’d been hunting for years.
“This award caps off an incredible year,” said Ribéry in Monaco on 29 August 2013, when he was crowned European Footballer of the Year. It was a reward for an outstanding season in which he won the treble with FCB.
Ribéry, who won his seventh Bundesliga title in 2017, remains an important part of the Bayern team. At the end of last season, he said goodbye to two people who had accompanied him throughout the years: Hermann Gerland and Philipp Lahm. The Frenchman himself extended his contract for a further year.
