Josef Bican: World’s Greatest Scorer
When people think of great scorers, they think of Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi. Some more knowledgeable hipsters might say Pele or Eusebio or even Dixie Dean if you ask your great-grandpa. But who is the greatest scorer in the literal sense of the word. As in, who’s scored the most goals. Ever.
Well, in a time when people’s main focus was far from football, there was Josef Bican. Josef was born in Vienna on 25 September 1913 to a poor family of five. Josef’s father, a former footballer himself, died when Josef was just 8 years old. The tragic irony was that, while František Bican, his father, had fought in a world war, his cause of death was an kidney injury sustained from a football match.
Josef started playing football for the side his dad played for, Hertha Vienna. Rapid Vienna scouts noticed him when he was just 18 and recruited him. When he first joined he got paid 150 Schillings, roughly 10,90 € today, but ended up gettind paid as much as 600 Schillings, which is equivalent to 43,60 €.
Despite boasting an already impressive goalscoring record of 95 goals in 88 matches for both Rapid and Admira, the real monster in him woke up during his 11 years on the books of Slavia Prague. With the Czech team he scored an honestly disgusting and outright extraordinary 399 goals in just 210 matches!!! He scored 7 goals in 3 separate matches in his stay there! Not only that but during his best goalscoring season he played 26 matches.
Take a quick guess on how many goals he scored.
…
So?
…
Ready?
57
If you said 57 youre either a liar or have really high standards.
He scored fifty fuc… freaking seven goals in 26 matches. 57!!
For context Messi during his legendary 92-goal-year played 69 matches giving him a goal scoring rate of 1.3333333. Bican’s ratio was 2.19.
In total he had a ratio of 1.9 goals per game while playing for Slavia. Outstanding.
Josef then went on to score a further 115 goals in 98 appearances for 3 different clubs, before retiring in 1955, at the age of 42.
On international level, he played for three different countries! He scored 14 in 19 for Austria, 12 in 14 for Czechoslovakia and 3 in 1 for Bohemia and Moravia. It would be fair to say that his deadly instinct and eye for goal didn’t translate the same when it came to the international stage, although he scored 48 goals in 54 matches in total. He also was ineligible to play in the 1938 World Cup for Czechoslovakia, but he did represent Austria in the 1934 edition in which the Burschen finished 4th.
So why isn’t his name mentioned among the likes of Gerd Muller or Jimmy Greaves. Well, just like people disregard Pele’s achievements because football was “easy” back then, or criticize anything from Ligue 1, due to it being a “farmer’s league”, same case scenario was with Josef Bican. Josef played a lot of his games in the midst of the second world war, when a lot of young people were drafted, leaving Josef with less competition. But when he was asked on whether or not scoring was easier when he was active, he said on Czech TV that “
So why isn’t his name mentioned among the likes of Gerd Muller or Jimmy Greaves. Well, just like people disregard Pele’s achievements because football was “easy” back then, or criticize anything from Ligue 1, due to it being a “farmer’s league”, same case scenario was with Josef Bican. Josef played a lot of his games in the midst of the second world war, when a lot of young people were drafted, leaving Josef with less competition. But when he was asked on whether or not scoring was easier when he was active, he said on Czech TV that “
So why isn’t his name mentioned among the likes of Gerd Muller or Jimmy Greaves. Well, just like people disregard Pele’s achievements because football was “easy” back then, or criticize anything from Ligue 1, due to it being a “farmer’s league”, same case scenario was with Josef Bican. Josef played a lot of his games in the midst of the second world war, when a lot of young people were drafted, leaving Josef with less competition. But when he was asked on whether or not scoring was easier when he was active, he said on Czech TV that “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.”
While reports range from a few hundred to five thousand, his official goal tally is 609 in 389 matches, giving him an average of 1.56 goals per game. He won 5 Czechoslovak league titles, being the top scorer in 10, yes 10 different seasons. That means that he wasn’t leading in goals for only 1(!!!) season in his 11 total seasons in the Czech capital. Political tensions in the 1940s forbid him from ever playing anywhere else, so the interest from Juventus remained just that. Interest.
Josef Bican died in 12 December 2001, at the age of 88. Thankfully, his legacy leaves on as FIFA has recognized 1468 of the goals that he scored, including friendlies. The IFFHS awarded Bican with the “Medal of Honour” in 1998 and the “Golden Ball” in 2000, a year before his death. And whether you believe he scored 805 goals, or a measly 518, you can’t deny Josef’s greatness.
