...10 years ago died Josef Bican. Many
of you have probably looked surprised at the screen, read the name
once again and whispered 'Who?' to themselves. Nothing to be
concerned about too much - unfortunately not that many people know
that we're talking of a man who was, arguably, the most prolific goal
scorer of all times.
During his career spanning a quarter of
a century he has played for a host of clubs in Austria and
Czechoslovakia. He's become a true symbol and legend of Slavia
Prague, a club for which he has scored – according to the team's
website – an astonishing 961 goals in 514 games! In the 1943/44
season he scored 57 goals in 24 games, which surely is a record in
its own right. At Slavia, he's been noted to have scored 4 goals in a
game on 20 occassions, 5 goals in 6 fixtures, once he's scored 6 and,
quite remarakbly, he's netted 7 goals 4 times, too! Bican undoubtedly
owns much of his goal-to-game ratio to his pace: he has reportedly
been able to run 100 meters in 10.8 seconds at a time when the world
record was around the 10.4-3 mark, therefore putting the Czech
striker on par with top contemporary sprinters. In the days of rather
stationary and bulky defenders the forwards' sheer speed must have
given him a huge advantage.
Due to the turbulent times in which he
has lived and played, he represented Austria and, later,
Czechoslovakia. In 1934 he was a member of the famed Austrian
Wunderteam under Hugo Meisl,
one of the most feared sides of
the early 1930's and probably the first internationally recognised
'dreamteam' to never win a World Cup, a feat shared by the Hungarians
some 20 years later. It has been said that Bican and another member
of the national team, Matthias Sindelar, have attracted crowds to the
training sessions at their respective clubs as they have entertained
them by displaying unseen level of skill or, like Bican, have shot
the ball at empty bottles and, much to the joy of the people
gathered, have usually hit most of them. I think most of us could
name at least a few modern day strikers who would dread the prospect
of such a training drill...
Just before the war
Bican applied for the Czechoslovakian citizenship yet the legend has
it that due to a clerical error he has not received it in time to
represent the country in the 1938 World Cup.
War
days and the time immediately following it have seen him play for
Slavia where he has kept notching up the awards for the league's top
striker, an accolade he has received 12 times in his career. This
amazing achievement has earned him the 'Golden Ball' as the greatest
goalscorer of the 20th
century which was awarded to him by the International Federation of
Football Historians and Statisticians (IFFHS). Ironically, the very
same organisation denied him a similar title just a few years
earlier, ignoring the goals Bican scored for Slavia during WWII. It
has also counted 'only' 643 league goals scored by Bican, a number
which has not been conclusively agreed on; another great striker and
Bican's contemporary, Franz Binder, claimed the Slavia Prague forward
to have scored in excess of 5,000 goals, however this figure is
mathematically improbable and can only be treated as a testament to
Bican's scoring prowess. A fair estimation of Bican's carrer – as
opposed to league – goals could be in the region of over 1250-1300
goals.
Bican gained a very
high profile off the pitch as well yet after he's retired he has been
forced by the communist regime to work at a railway station and lost the status
as well as wealth he has acquired over the years, effectively drifting into obscurity. Only in 1989 he and
his family managed to reclaim some of it and Pepi – as he was
nicknamed - had again started to be recognised as the legend he most
definitely has been.
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