Josef Bican

Josef Bican was born in Favoriten, Vienna, Austria-Hungary, to parents František Bican and Ludmila Kopecka, at Quellenstrasse 101. He was the second of three children, František, Josef and Vilík. 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 1921 after refusing an operation to treat an infected kidney after an injury sustained during a football match. This was when František was just 10, Josef was 8 and Vilík was 3. Hertha Vienna officials gave František a nice funeral and told Ludmila that they would take care of her sons and would even give them an education. At first they visited the boys every day and would bring something to help out. However this soon changed as they would come every week, once a fortnight and within three months it was as if they had forgotten about the Bican family. Ludmila was stuck in a desperate situation, she sent Vilík to be looked after by his grandparents in Bohemia, until he was 14. Ludmila's life got harder as she had to work twice as hard as before, cleaning crayfish and washing dishes at a nearby restaurant. Most days she would have to get up at four in the morning to come home at ten, but sometimes even later.[14]

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. For entertainment František and Josef would make a football out of old material and sometimes Ludmila would be left without one stocking. On some days they would arrive at school with dirty clothes and foreheads due to playing football before school. They would play matches between classes and between schools, they had no time to study. Josef would play football so much that she had to lock him indoors to try and get him to study. The players at his school would whistle and call to Josef to get him to come to a match that day. He lived one story up, but this didn't stop him. He climbed out the window and played the game. The school team was victorious as the score was 12–2, Josef had scored 8 goals.

His older brother, František, was also a good footballer, as he started playing for Hertha Vienna, aged 11. František died tragically at 17. They had brought him home with a knife in his heart. They had told the Bican family that it was a very unfortunate accident that he had taken his own life. In situations like these Ludmila was normally brave, however this time she was scared and she sent Josef to live with Vilík and his grandparents.[15]

Working at Schustek parquet factory, Josef would work around the office and in the warehouse and earnt twenty shillings a week. In the spring of 1931 Farbenlutz attracted Bican to start working for them as he would earn 30 shillings a week.[16]

At the age of twelve, Bican was already playing in the youth set-up of Hertha Vienna and he was even coached by a former player that had played with his father. The Hertha Vienna pitch was only a few steps away from his house. Bican was the smallest of the boys there, however a Hertha Vienna official told him, “You’ll get a shilling every time you score.” He scored two in his very first match.[15]

As his career slowed down at Hertha Vienna, due to him not playing for almost half a year, one of his friends invited him to play for Schustek. It was a parquet factory, small but profitable. At the age of 15, in the autumn of 1928, Bican made his debut for Schustek. Josef scored three goals in a 5–2 friendly victory over Nord Vienna. In 1931 he would start playing for Farbenlutz and would not even train.[16]

Near to where Bican lived, Roman Schramseis also resided and after seeing Bican play on several occasions, Roman offered him the chance to train at Rapid Wien. “I already told Richard Kuthan about it.” Bican was invited to watch a training session with the amateur team, but as soon as he and his friend watched the others play they got scared and headed home. The next Tuesday, Bican was to play a training game between the junior team and the amateur team. He played for the junior team as they won 7–2 and scored five goals. On the Sunday of the same week he was again invited to play for the adult team. Rapid Wien beat their opponents 4-2 and Bican scored two.[17]

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 Wien, club where Matthias Sindelar played, Bican scored four goals in a victory 5–3.[18]

Bican recalls the game as this: "Sometime in the tenth minute, I received the ball from the right, in a large amount of space, went around Gall and with my left foot, I scored the first goal, into the corner. Weselik broke through and struck a shot that hit the cross bar, on the rebound I hooked the ball into to the net, again, with my left foot. Before halftime, I scored my third goal, a nice, clean instep at full speed. My teammates rushed towards me and carried me to the center of the field. For my fourth, I luckily got past Mock and only Gall was in front of me, he took me to the ground, but I was still able to shoot and score the decisive fifth goal. When the match was over, everyone was kissing me. But in the dressing room they had to cut open my sleeve, to get my shirt off me. I had finished the game with a swollen wrist. I didn't even notice it. The joy was greater than the pain".[19][20]

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. Intotal for Rapid Vienna Josef played 156 games an scored 201 goals. Through one of his uncles, a deal was done with Admira Wien, 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. [21]

During 1937, Bican left Vienna to join Czech club Slavia Prague. 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.[22] 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).[23] Three times in his career, Bican scored seven goals in a game.[24] In a 1939–40 league match against Zlín, Bican found the net seven times as Slavia ran out 10–1 winners.[24] During the 1939–40 season, he set a world record for the longest goal-scoring streak in a European top division when he scored at least one goal for 19 games in a row, netting a total of 47 goals over his run that included hat-tricks in 5 back-to-back league games. His record stood for 73 years until it was broken in 2013 by Lionel Messi (21 games in the Spanish league).[25] 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.[24] It was 1947–48 before Bican managed his third seven-goal match, as Slavia defeated České Budějovice in a game which finished 15–1.[24]

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.[23][26]

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.[27] 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.[28]

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.[29] 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.[27]

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.[30]

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.[31]

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".[32]

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]

Grandfather František and Grandmother Terezie were one of the poorest families of the town. Grandfather František’s second son Josef, died during the war and for financial support they took 50 koruna per month. The start of young Josef’s love for fishing came when Grandfather František took him and Vilík to a nearby river and the boys would fish either side of František.[33]

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.[32] 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.[34][35] 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.[5]

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."[35][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]

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 two 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]

Rapid Wien

• Austrian Championship: 1934–35

Admira Wien

• Austrian Championship: 1935–36, 1936–37

Slavia Prague

• Czechoslovak First League: 1939–40, 1940–41, 1941–42, 1942–43, 1946–47, 1948
• Czechoslovak Cup: 1940–41, 1941–42
• Central Bohemian Cup: 1940–41, 1943, 1944
• Liberty Cup: 1945
• Mitropa Cup: 1938

Individual

• Austrian Championship Top Scorer: 1933–34[38]
• Czechoslovak First League Top Scorer: 1937–38, 1938–39, 1939–40, 1940–41, 1941–42, 1942–43,1943–44, 1945–46, 1946–47, 1948, 1950
• European Golden Shoe (unofficial): 1939–40, 1940–41, 1941–42, 1943–44

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