Web Quotableonline.com Frasescelebres.org Greatbookscollection.org

Josef "Pepi" Bican (September 25, 1913 in Vienna -
December 12, 2001) was arguably the greatest
Czechoslovakia|Czech football (soccer)|footballer
ever. He was a 5x European Golden Boot winner.

He was born to Ludmila, a Viennese Czech woman and
Frantisek, who came from Sedlice in southern
Bohemia. Josef's father was a footballer who
played for Hertha Vienna. He went to fight in
World War I and returned uninjured. However,
Frantisek was to die at the age of just 30 because
he refused 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 had to play football without any
shoes, which helped him hone his ball control
skills.

Bican attended the Jan Amos Komensky school, a
Czech school in Vienna. At 12-years-old, Bican
started to play for the Hertha Vienna junior team.
As an 18-year-old, Bican was spotted by Rapid
Vienna, who were a big club in the city at the
time. When he first joined, he received 150
schillings, but, by the age of 20, Rapid wanted to
keep him so much that they paid him 600
schillings.

On one of the few times that his mother, Ludmila,
came to watch him, she was so annoyed about a foul
her son had been on the receiving end of that she
ran onto the pitch and beat the opponent with her
umbrella!

As well as being a great all-round player who
could use both feet, Bican had great pace - he
could run the 100 metres in 10.8 seconds, which
was as fast as many sprinters of the time.

On November 29, 1933, aged 20 years and 64 days,
Bican made his debut for Austria national football
team|Austria in a 2-2 draw against Scotland
national football team|Scotland. He went on to
play for them at the Football World Cup 1934|1934
World Cup, when Austria got to the semi-finals.

In 1937, Bican left Vienna to join SK Slavia
Praha|Slavia Prague.  He played for Slavia
throughout World War II. At the same time, he
applied for Czech citizenship. However, when he
eventually became a Czech citizen, he discovered
that a clerical error meant he couldn't play at
the World Cup in 1938. In total, he scored 29
goals in 34 international matches for 3 teams
(Austria, Czechoslovakia national football
team|Czechoslovakia and Protectorate of
Bohemia-Moravia|Bohemia & Moravia). His final
national team appearance was for Czechoslovakia in
a 3-1 defeat against Bulgaria national football
team|Bulgaria on September 4, 1949. Incredibly, he
was the league top-scorer 12 times in his career.

However, his success did have its downside. Other
members of the team became jealous of Bican's
success. They called him a number of names,
including "Austrian bastard."

After the war, several of Europe|Europe's biggest
clubs wanted Bican. Juventus offered him handsome
terms to join them, but he refused, after he was
advised that Communism|Communists might take over
Italy. He stayed in Prague and, ironically, the
Communists came to power there in 1948. Bican
refused to join the Communist Party, just as he
had refused to join the Nazi Party in Austria.

Bican tried to improve his standing with the
Communists by joining Vitkovice Zelezarna. In
1951, he joined SK Hradec Kralove|Hradec Kralove,
but, on May 1, 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 finally retired from playing, still at Slavia,
at the age of 42 in 1955. He was the oldest player
in the league at that time.

In the spring of 1968, Bican was told that he
would be allowed to take a coaching job abroad. He
impressed the Belgium|Belgian team K.S.K.
Tongeren|Tongeren and they hired him as a coach.

At that time, Pelé was heading for his 1000th
goal and many journalists were looking for another
player who had scored a thousand goals. A former
Germany|German player suggested Bican, who he
claimed had scored 5000 goals. When reporters
asked Bican why he hadn't made more of a fuss over
his goalscoring feats, he simply said "who'd have
believed me if I said I'd scored five times as
many goals as Pele?!" Although 5000 goals seems
unlikely to be true, the normal practice is to
count league goals only. Bican scored 643 league
goals.

Josef "Pepi" 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 - the grand
old man of Czech football.