Josef Bican (1913 - 2001), nickname "Pepi", was an Austrian-Czech football player who played as a striker for a variety of clubs and national teams of Austria and Czechslovakia. He was famous for his goal scoring ability when he was top scorer in the whole of Europe for 5 separate seasons. Bican could use either left foot or right fool to score and he also had considerable pace which allowed him to run 100 metres in only 10.8 seconds. Those abilities made him the nightmare for every defense in Europe in that period.

The team that Bican had played for the longest time was Slavia Prague. He had played 217 matches for the leading team of Czechslovakia and scored 395 goals. And in his 27-year career, Bican scored more than 800 goals in total (statistics by IFFHS). More impressive, he had 3 times scoring 7 goals in a single match, an achievement that is not easy to be repeated.

In comparison to Pele, the world's greatest football scorer according to Guinness, Bican was not as famous as the Brazilian. He never won a World Cup, while Pele was a two-time winner at the biggest football tournament. But Pele just scored about 767 goals in official matches and only ranked 3rd in the top 10 goal scorers of all-time, according to 2 prestigious world's football statistics organization, IFFHS and RSSSF. Romario, another Brazilian, ranked 2nd with 772 goals. And on the top is Josef Bican with more than 805 goals.

Bican was not only a good player but also a good coach. He started his coach career at his old team, Slavia Prague, from 1954 to 1956 and only retired in 1977, when he was 64 years old.

An interesting story about Bican is in the late 60s, as Pele was getting ready for his "1,000th" goal, many journalists were searching for another player who had scored a thousand goals. Former Austrian player Franz "Bimbo" Binder suggested Bican, who he claimed had scored 5,000 goals. When reporters asked Bican why he hadn't made more of a fuss about his goal scoring feats, he simply said "Who'd have believed me if I said I'd scored five times as many goals as Pelé?!"

The legend of Austrian and world football spent the last few months of his life in hospital with heart problems. He had hoped to be home for the 2001's Christmas, but died less than 2 weeks before that, at the age of 88.

World Records Union - Worldkings are still collecting more information from many sources and it is our pleasure listening to everybody's comments to have a full evaluation on the record nomination: "Josef Bican - The player who scored the most goal in official football matches."