Josef Bican - Club Career

Club Career

When Bican first joined Rapid, he received 150 schillings, but, by the age of 20, Rapid wanted to keep him so much that they paid him 600 schillings.

In 1937, Bican left Vienna to join Czech club Slavia Prague. He played for Slavia throughout World War II. In eight league seasons he would score 328 goals, including 57 in 24 matches one particular year. Three times in his career, Bican scored seven goals in a game. In a 1939/40 league match against Zlín, Bican found the net seven times as Slavia ran out 10–1 winners. In the 1940/41 season, Bican matched his feat of the previous season, again against Zlín, scoring seven times, as Slavia won by a 12–1 scoreline. It was 1947/48 before Bican managed his third seven-goal match, as Slavia defeated České Budějovice in a game which finished 15–1.

He was, in the leagues that he played, the top-scorer 12 times in his 27 years career and Europe's top scorer in five consecutive seasons, from 1939/40 to 1943/44 while the most of players and the physically fit young men were in the war.

In the devastated Europe after the war, several of Europe's biggest clubs should have wanted Bican. Juventus offered him handsome terms to join them, but he refused, supposedly after he was advised that 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 steel works Železárny Vítkovice. In 1951, he joined FC Hradec Králové, but, on 1 May 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. During this time Bican briefly managed Hradec Králové and Slavia and then was appointed manager of Pilsen.