The greatest (footballing) story never told...

When thinking of great goalscorers, people think of the likes of Pele, Gerd Muller, or Alan Shearer. Few, though, would mention the name Josef Bican.

This is a man who is largely unknown in the football world, being named in some quarters as being "criminally underrated".

Czech-Austrian forward Josef Bican is estimated to have scored around 800 goals in all competitive matches during his long and fabled career. This would make him the all-time most prolific scorer in the history of football.

The reason this story seems so surprising is that so little is spoken about Bican, and the fact that many people throughout the football world know little about him, if anything at all...

Born in Vienna in 1913, into a poor Czech family, Bican's earlierst footballing memories are those of a tough start, with his family so hard up he was unable to afford shoes, and so played barefoot, with a ball made of rags. This, he later said, in fact helped his ball control and other aspects of his game. This is where Bican's footballing odyssey began - playing noon til night on the streets.

At the age of 18, he was signed by Rapid Vienna, one of the country's biggest clubs. This is where Bican's story really begins...

Bican was known not only for his unprecendented footballing ability as a whole, but in particular for his pace (he was known to be able to run 100m in 10.8 secs), and his finishing.

Josef Bican's goalscoring ability though was quite incredible. As all footballing fans will know, scoring around one goal every two games is a highly impressive ratio. One in one is very rare, and absolutely magnificent also.

Mr Josef Bican, in total played 49 matches for Rapid Vienna. I'll let you guess the number of goals he scored... 50?... 60?...

No. Josef Bican scored 108 goals in just 49 appearances - over two goals a game. To put it in layman's terms, imagine a team where, with Bican playing, they could be nigh on guaranteed two goals, before the match had even kicked off. THAT, is why I so firmly believe Bican is so underrated.

But, wait, he didn't stop there. Having moved on from Rapid Vienna, Josef joined Slavia Prague, a Czech club. Bican scored an incomprehensible 395 goals in just 217 appearances for Slavia Prague.

You really just cannot understand why more has not been said about this wonderful footballer.

At the time, as Bican's exploits became more and more well known and heard about, he became a target for some of Europe's largest clubs. Juventus were close to securing his signature, but he turned them down and opted to stay in Prague as he was advised that communists would soon take over in Italy. Ironically, though, communists took over in Prague just a couple of years later. Bican refused to join them though, just as he had with the Nazi Party in Austria.

In order to try and improve his attention among the communists, Bican joined FC Hradec Kralove, a communist side. Eventually though, Bican was forced to leave the club and the city by the Communist Party, and so went back to Slavia Prague, or Dynamo Prague, as they were then known.

Bican saw out the rest of his playing career there, eventually retiring at the age of 42, before starting a managerial career.

Bican's magnificent career only recently began to be recognised, after the communist regime in his home country was crushed in 1989.

Josef Bican died in 2001 at the age of 88. He is believed to have died happy, knowing that his place in the game was finally in some ways recognised.

Below is a profile of Josef Bican from football podcast "The Football Ramble"