Slavia Praha

A footballer scored 416 goals in 219 matches for one club, and he did it in Prague between 1937 and 1948, through occupation and its aftermath. Josef Bican's numbers belong to Slavia Prague and to a period when the team's red-and-white halved shirt — right side red, left side white, a scheme settled in 1895 — was the team's kit.

The club that gave him those years had begun as something else entirely. It started in 1892 as a literary and cycling society, SK ACOS Praha, took the name Slavia the following year, and only opened a football section in 1896. The Scot Johnny Madden then coached the side from 1905 to 1930, a quarter of a century that produced the first run of dominance.

Under communist rule the name kept changing with the political weather — Sokol Slavia, then Dynamo in various forms — before SK Slavia Praha returned in 1991. The trophy record from the middle decades is thin by comparison.

His teams have taken three league titles and four cups, including the 2020/21 season completed without a defeat. Karel Jarolím had earlier delivered two championships between 2005 and 2010.

Home is the Fortuna Arena, opened on 7 May 2008 on the site of the old Eden ground, holding 19,370. The naming has moved with the ownership — Eden Arena, then Sinobo Stadium — and the ownership itself has moved a fair distance, from the Chinese group CEFC to Sinobo and, since 2023, to the Czech businessman Pavel Tykač.

Two derbies frame the season: Sparta across the city, and Bohemians 1905 from the same Vršovice district. The modern record does not yet include a European trophy, or anything on the continental stage to set beside the domestic run.