Josef Bican

Bican was born in Vienna to František and Ludmila Bican. He was the second of three children.[14] František was from Sedlice in Southern Bohemia, and Ludmila was Viennese Czech. Josef's father František was a footballer who played for Hertha Vienna. He fought in World War I and returned uninjured. However, František died at the early age of 30 in the year 1921 after refusing an operation to treat a kidney injury sustained in a football match. His mother worked in a restaurant kitchen.

The family's poverty meant that Bican initially had to play football without shoes, which helped him improve his ball control skills. Bican attended the Jan Amos Komenský school, a Czech school in Vienna. In 1925, four years after his father's death, twelve-year-old Bican started to play for the Hertha Vienna junior team, Hertha Vienna II. When he was 18, Bican was spotted by Rapid Vienna, who were a big club in the city at the time.[15]

In 1931, when Bican first joined Rapid, he received 150 schillings, but, by the age of 20, Rapid wanted to keep him so much that they paid him 600 schillings.[10] In his debut game against Austria Vienna, club where Matthias Sindelar played, Bican scored four goals in a victory 5–3.[16] Bican won the Austrian title with Rapid in 1934–35 and his first goalscoring title, but by the end of the season, he had been suspended after refusing to sign a new contract and Bican decided to go on strike. Through one of his uncles, a deal was done with Admira Vienna, at the time the most successful side in Austrian history. Rapid however refused to release his registration, and Bican went nine months without playing a game. When he was allowed to leave, Bican won championships in both his seasons with the Vienna club, but his heart was set on his family's homeland.[15]

During 1937, Bican left Vienna to join Czech club Slavia Prague.[14] Bican was the top scorer in his first season, but Slavia finished as runner-up. The following season, in March 1939, Germany invaded Czechoslovakia and football split on similar lines, with Bohemian and Moravian clubs carrying their results from the Czechoslovak league into the new Bohemian-Moravian league. Bican was again the top scorer of the league but Sparta Prague, Slavia's greatest rival, won the championship again.[15] The third year (1941) the first of Bican's four championships came with the third of the continuous 10 goalscoring titles. He played for Slavia throughout World War II, while many of his football rivals were at war. During eight league seasons he scored 328 goals, including 57 in 26 matches one particular season (1943–44).[17] Three times in his career, Bican scored seven goals in a game.[18] In a 1939–40 league match against Zlín, Bican found the net seven times as Slavia ran out 10–1 winners.[18] During the 1940–41 season, Bican matched his feat of the previous season, again against Zlín, scoring seven times, as Slavia won by a 12–1 scoreline.[18] It was 1947–48 before Bican managed his third seven-goal match, as Slavia defeated České Budějovice in a game which finished 15–1.[18]

He was in the leagues that he played, the top-scorer 12 times during his 25-year professional career and Europe's and the world's top scorer in five consecutive seasons, from 1939–40 to 1943–44, a record that still stands.[17][19]

After the war several of Europe's big clubs were interested in signing Bican. Italian side Juventus were very keen and offered Bican handsome terms. He was advised that there was a big chance the Communists could take over in Italy, but what actually happened was the opposite. When the Communists came to power in Czechoslovakia in 1948, Bican refused to join the Communist Party, just as before the war he had refused to join the Nazi Party in Austria.[20] Josef Bican’s image had established him as one of the biggest names in the country's society. But his happy days were soon to be over. The communist government wanted to use Bican as a propaganda weapon. When he refused to be a puppet, the Czechoslovak authorities put it about that Bican was a bourgeois Viennese, ignoring his plea that his origins were humble.[21]

Bican tried to improve his standing with the Communists[10] by joining steel works Železárny Vítkovice. During 1952, he joined FC Hradec Králové,[lower-alpha 1] where he managed to score 53 goals in 26 matches.[22] On 1 May 1953, the Communist Party forced him to leave the city and, therefore, the club. After being forced to leave, he returned to Slavia Prague, or, as it was known then, Dynamo Prague. He continued to play for Dynamo until retiring from playing at the age of 42 in 1955. He was the oldest player in the league at that time.[20]

On 29 November 1933, aged 20 years and 64 days, Bican made his debut for Austria in a 2–2 draw against Scotland. He later played for them at the 1934 World Cup, when the Austrian Wunderteam reached the semifinals. His solitary goal in the tournament came in extra time of Austria's 3–2 win over France.[23]

At the time Bican was playing for Slavia Prague, he applied for Czechoslovak citizenship. However, when he eventually became a Czechoslovak citizen, he discovered that a clerical error meant he couldn't play at the 1938 World Cup. In total, he scored 29 goals in 34 international matches for three national teams (Austria, Czechoslovakia and Bohemia & Moravia). His final national team appearance was for Czechoslovakia in a 3–1 defeat against Bulgaria on 4 September 1949.[24]

However, his success did have a disadvantage. Other members of the team became jealous of the tall, handsome Bican's success, and he was sometimes called abusive names, such as "Austrian bastard".[25]

In addition to representing Austria, Czechoslovakia and the region of Bohemia & Moravia, Bican also played a number of fixtures playing for teams consisting of the best players from a league or town between 1939 and 1949. For the Bohemia-Moravia league team in 1939 he played six games scoring nine goals, for the Bohemia league team in 1940–1944 he played eight games scoring 11 goals, for Prague from 1938 to 1948 he played six games scoring one goal and Ostrava in 1949 he played one game scoring one goal, bringing Bican's total number of official goals outside of club football to 48 goals in 54 games.[7]

Goals for Austria

Austria's goal tally[23]

#	Date	Venue	Opponent	Score	Result	Competition
1.	10 December 1933	Olympic Stadium, Amsterdam, Netherlands	Netherlands	1–0	1–0	Friendly
2.	11 February 1934	Charmilles Stadium, Geneva, Switzerland	Switzerland	1–0	3–2	1933–35 Dr. Gero Cup
3.				3–2
4.	15 April 1934	Hohe Warte Stadium, Vienna, Austria	Hungary	4–2	5–2	Friendly
5.				5–2
6.	27 May 1934	Stadio Benito Mussolini, Turin, Italy	France	3–1	3–2	1934 FIFA World Cup
7.	6 October 1935	Praterstadion, Vienna, Austria	Hungary	1–1	4–4	1933–1935 Dr.Gero Cup
8.				2–2
9.				3–4
10.	19 January 1936	Estadio Metropolitano de Madrid, Madrid, Spain	Spain	1–0	5–4	Friendly
11.	26 January 1936	Campo da Constituição, Porto, Portugal	Portugal	3–1	3–2	Friendly
12.	22 March 1936	Praterstadion, Vienna, Austria	Czechoslovakia	1–1	1–1	1936–37 Dr. Gero Cup
13.	5 April 1936	Praterstadion, Vienna, Austria	Hungary	1–1	3–5	Friendly
14.				2–3

Goals for Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia's goal tally[24][23]

#	Date	Venue	Opponent	Score	Result	Competition
1.	7 August 1938	Råsunda Stadium, Stockholm, Sweden	Sweden	2–0	6–2	Friendly
2.				3–0
3.				5–2
4.	28 August 1938	Stadion Concordije, Zagreb, Kingdom of Yugoslavia	Yugoslavia	2–0	3–1
5.	4 December 1938	AC Sparta Stadion, Praha, Czechoslovakia	Romania	1–2	6–2
6.				3–2
7.				4–2
8.				6–2
9.	11 May 1947		Yugoslavia	1–0	3–1
10.				3–1
11.	31 August 1947		Poland	1–0	6–3
12.				2–0

Goals for Bohemia and Moravia

Bohemia and Moravia's goal tally[24][23]

#	Date	Venue	Opponent	Score	Result	Competition
1.	12 November 1939	Hermann Göring Stadium, Wroclaw, Nazi Germany	Germany	1–0	4–4	Friendly
2.				3–0
3.				4–2

Tombstone of Bican at Prague's Vyšehrad cemetery

Bican's grave, plus a headstone for his wife Jarmila, who died exactly ten years after him

During the spring of 1968, Bican was told that he would be allowed to have a coaching job abroad. He impressed the Belgian team Tongeren and they hired him as a coach, where he had some success taking them from Division 4 to Division 2.

Around this time, Pelé was getting ready for his 1000th goal and many journalists were searching for another player who had scored a thousand goals. Former Austrian player Franz "Bimbo" Binder suggested Bican, who he claimed to have scored over 5000 goals in all competitions.[25] When reporters asked Bican why he had not sought more attention for his goalscoring feats, he simply said, "who'd have believed me if I said I'd scored five times as many goals as Pelé?" However, to score over 5000 goals he should have kept an average of 185 goals/year along all his 27 years of career, but only counting goals in official matches, Bican scored at least 950 goals.[7] Bican's goal-scoring feats are often forgotten because he did not make a big fuss about it in the media. His record is often overshadowed by Pelé's 1303 goal record, including goals in unofficial matches. But shortly before his death in 2001, IFFHS based on RSSSF statistics declared Bican with 643 league goals, the most prolific scorer of the 20th century.[26][27] This was judged by the number of times a player had been top scorer in his domestic league. Bican managed this feat 12 times, more than any other player in football history.[6]

In the 1990s, Bican spoke to Czech TV about the difficulty of scoring during his era: "When I talk to young reporters, they always say, 'Mr Bican, scoring was easier back in your day.' But I ask them, 'How come? Look, are there opportunities today?' And they tell me, 'Of course there are, many of them'. And I say, 'There you go. If there weren't opportunities, it would be difficult. But if there are, scoring is the same as it was a hundred years ago, and will be the same in a hundred years' time, too. It will always be the same."[27][13]

"Bican was incredibly unlucky at the height of his career. There was no World Cup in 1942 or 1946 because of the war. If the 1942 edition had taken place, for example, he would surely have become more widely known. Perhaps he might even have been as famous as Pele", Radovan Jelinek, sports historian said about him.[11]

Josef Bican spent the last few months of his life in hospital with heart problems. He had hoped to be home for Christmas, but died less than 2 weeks before that, at the age of 88. In September 2013, which would have been Bican's 100th birthday, Slavia Prague commemorated him by wearing shirts that featured a replica of his signature on them.[9]

• List of men's footballers with 500 or more goals
• List of world association football records