Josef Bican

In 1925, at the age of twelve, Bican was already playing in the youth set-up of Hertha Vienna, his father's beloved club, and also where his idol, Matthias Sindelar had begun his career. At Hertha, he was 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, his ability to score goals caught the attention of everyone around. One of the club’s officials was so impressed that he told him, "You’ll get a shilling every time you score." He scored two in his very first match. Thus, football became a vital income to the poor Bican family. 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. It is said that once his mother, who had come to watch him, was so annoyed about a foul her son received that she ran onto the pitch and beat the opponent with her umbrella. In 1931 he would start playing for Farbenlutz and would not even train. Near to where Bican lived, Roman Schramseis resided; after seeing Bican play on several occasions, Roman offered him the chance to train at Rapid Wien, telling him he had "already told Richard Kuthan about it". In his first youth game for the club, he…

Rapid Vienna

In 1931, when Bican first joined Rapid Vienna, he received 150 schillings, but, by the age of 20, Rapid wanted to keep him so much that they paid him 600 schillings. In 1931, for Rapid Vienna's Reserve team, Josef scored 30 goals in 16 games. In his debut game against Austria Wien, club where Matthias Sindelar played, Bican scored four goals in a victory 5–3. 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 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". In 1932 Josef scored 51 goals in 42 games for Rapid Vienna. 23 goals in 9 reserve team games and 28 goals in 33 first team games In 1933 Josef signed a contract to play a game for Wiener, in which they beat Phonix…

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. At the time he was playing for Slavia Prague, Bican 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. He scored two hat-tricks for Czechoslovakia, including a four-goal haul against Romania in the 1937–38 Eduard Benes Cup in a 6–2 win. He also played for Bohemia & Moravia in two matches, both against Germany and scoring a hat-trick in each of them. In total, he scored 32 goals in 35 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, a few days short from his 36th birthday. Bican's success had a disadvantage, namely that other members of the team became jealous of him, and he was sometimes called abusive names, such as "Austrian bastard". 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…

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 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 due to 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. 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.…