Josef Bican

Josef "Pepi" Bican (25 September 1913 – 12 December 2001) was an Austrian-Czech professional footballer who played as a striker.

He is widely regarded as the greatest goalscorer in the history of the sport.

He is considered by RSSSF as the second-most prolific goalscorer in history after Erwin Helmchen, with over 950 goals scored in 624 official matches.

He scored 427 goals in 221 games for Slavia Prague across his 11-year playing career at the club.

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.

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.

Bican was a member of the Austrian Wunderteam of the 1930s and represented the nation at the 1934 FIFA World Cup, where they reached the semi-finals.

Bican began his professional career at Rapid Vienna in 1931.

After four years at Rapid, he moved to local rivals Admira Vienna.

Bican won four league titles during his time in Austria, moved to Slavia Prague in 1937, where he stayed until 1948, and became the club's all-time top goalscorer.

He later switched allegiance to the Czechoslovakia national football team, but a clerical error related to his transfer of national team precluded him from playing in the 1938 FIFA World Cup.

Bican was a tall and powerful player, with the technical ability to play with both feet, and had considerable pace.

During his athletic prime, he was reportedly capable of running 100 metres in 10.8 seconds, which was not far off the leading sprinters of his time.

After his retirement from playing, Bican became a manager, and coached various teams from the 1950s until the 1970s.

He later played for FC Vitkovice, FC Hradec Králové, and Dynamo Praha, retiring in 1955 as the all-time top goalscorer in the Czechoslovak First League with 447 goals.

According to UEFA, the governing body for European football, he is the leading all-time goalscorer in European top-flight leagues with 518 goals (447 in Czechoslovakia and 71 in Austria), narrowly ahead of Hungarian Ferenc Puskás.

In 1998, Bican was given a "Medal of Honour" by the International Federation of Football History & Statistics (IFFHS) for being among the world's most successful top division goalscorers of all time.

In 2000, the IFFHS awarded Bican the "Golden Ball" in recognition of his status as the greatest goalscorer of the 20th century.

The award was based on how many times a player had been top scorer in his domestic league, a feat which Bican achieved 12 times.

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.

His father was from Sedlice in Southern Bohemia, and his mother was a Viennese Czech.

Josef's father František was a footballer who played for.

He fought in World War I and returned uninjured.