The 5 Greatest Handball Players of All-Time
The Top 5 Greatest Handball Players Ever
Handball is a growing sport all over the world - but who are the best handball players of all-time?
Read on to find out Anthony Tomas’ top picks!
Legendary handball player Nikola Karabatic
Handball incorporates everything you need for a team sport: skill, flair, speed, strength and plenty of scoring.
While anyone can learn the game of handball only a select few have the intelligence, game management and positional expertise to succeed at the elite level.
To be considered one of the handball greats puts you at the same table as the greatest sportsmen in history.
In this article, we’ve compiled a list of the greatest handball players of all-time, including athletes from across the globe.
What is Handball?
An indoor sport played by two teams of seven players - six court players and one goalkeeper - the game of handball is the second fastest team sport in the world.
Codified over a century ago, it was first played outdoors and featured in the 1936 Olympics before the first World Handball Championships took place two years later.
After going indoors, handball was played at the 1972 Olympics and it has been a fixture of every Summer Olympic Games since.
The object of the game is to score more than your opponents by throwing the ball past the goalkeeper into a three-metre wide, two-metre high goal. This is protected by a six-metre area that only goalkeepers can enter.
It is normal for a goal to be scored, on average, once a minute during a 60-minute match!
For more details about how the game is played, its positions, rules and more, check out our ultimate guide to handball.
So who are the best handball players of all time?
1. Nikola Karabatic
Four-time world champion
He has won three IHF World Player of the Year awards
He won the EHF Champions League title in 2003 - his first of three titles
The career of Nikola Karabatic is very much in its twilight, yet the 39-year-old has achieved enough already to sail off into the sunset as the game’s greatest.
Born in Nis, modern-day Serbia, Karabatic moved to France when he was just three years old and has represented Les Experts 335 times since 2002, scoring over 1200 goals.
A centre-back who can play anywhere across the backcourt, he is a four-time world champion, taking the title in 2009, 2011, 2015 and 2017. He is also a three-time European champion (2006, 2010 and 2014) and a three-time Olympic gold medallist (2008, 2012 and 2020).
During his time with the national team, he was named the MVP of four tournaments and won six silver and bronze medals in total.
Winning the first of his three IHF World Player of the Year awards in 2007 and the last in 2016 - with three runner-up spots in between - his success speaks to his longevity, and so often he has been the man to choose for a big occasion.
He won the first of his EHF Champions League titles in 2003 with Montpellier, added another in 2007 with THW Kiel, before winning a third with a different club in 2015 with FC Barcelona.
That year, he became the jewel in the Paris Saint-Germain crown by signing for the free-spending Parisians, and he has been there ever since.
The winner of a plethora of league titles and countless individual awards, Karabatic was still going strong in the 2022/23 season before injury prevented him from an appearance in another Champions League Final Four with PSG.
2. Ivano Balic
He won the 2003 World Championship
He won gold at the Athens Olympics in 2004
Named MVP twice at the World Championships
A few years ago, Ivano Balic was styling himself as the “Handball GOAT” on social media. Maybe he is tired of using the hashtag, or maybe he believes he has been dethroned by Karabatic or another modern-day player.
The Croatian’s backcourt career began with his hometown club, RK Split, in 1997, and he eventually found himself at Portland San Antonio in Pamplona, Spain, in 2004.
With the Spanish side, he won the 2005 league title before finishing as runners-up to Ciudad Real in the 2006 EHF Champions League final - the closest he got to lifting club handball’s biggest prize.
He won further Croatian and Spanish league titles with Zagreb and Atletico Madrid, respectively, before finishing his club career in Germany in 2015 with Wetzlar.
On an international level, Balic had much more success over the course of his 198 caps from 2001 to 2012.
Croatia shocked the world by winning the 2003 World Championship, but they proved it wasn’t a fluke a year later by taking gold at the Athens Olympics.
With Balic in the squad, the team won a further two world silvers, two European silvers and a bronze, plus an Olympic bronze in London.
But Balic was much more than a squad player in these successes. He was named MVP twice at the World Championships and twice at the European Championships.
He was named IHF Player of the Year in both 2003 and 2006 and topped an IHF poll conducted in 2010, which voted him the best handball player of all-time.
3. Thierry Omeyer
He was part of the first French team to win the EHF Champions League
Nicknamed “The Wall”
France won the World Championship five times with Omeyer on their team
All too often, it’s not the goals that decide handball matches, it’s the saves! Fewer goalkeepers have made more high-pressure saves at the most important moment than Thierry Omeyer.
Born in Mulhouse, France, Omeyer began his career with Selestat Alsace before catching the eye of Montpellier in 2000.
His finest achievement in the south of France was in 2003 when he - alongside Nikola Karabatic - was part of the first French team to win the EHF Champions League.
In 2006, after six years and five French league titles at Montpellier, he joined German giants THW Kiel, linking up with Karabatic again after he’d moved to the port city a year earlier.
Nicknamed “the Wall” by adoring Kiel fans, Omeyer helped win six Bundesliga titles in seven years, plus the Champions League in 2007, 2010 and 2012.
He went back to Montpellier for the 2013-14 season, before spending five years at star-studded Paris Saint-Germain who, much like their football counterparts, just somehow could not win the Champions League.
Omeyer spent 18 years between the posts for France, amassing a whopping 356 caps from 1999 to 2017.
It is no coincidence that this period represented the best in France’s history; they won the World Championship five times with Omeyer in the team: in 2001, 2009, 2011, 2015 and 2017.
But their dominance did not end there; they won back-to-back Olympic titles in Beijing and London, plus three European titles. Omeyer was part of 10 major finals for France - and he won all of them!
Handball is still one of the most popular sports in France today.
Omeyer is one of only three goalkeepers to pick up the IHF Player of the Year award, doing so in 2008. As a 38-year-old, he even saw off all competition to be named the 2015 World Championship MVP.
4. Mikkel Hansen
He won the IHF Player of the Year award in 2011, 2015 and 2018
He was named MVP at the 2016 Olympics
He won three successive world titles in 2019, 2021 and 2023 with Denmark
Danish left-back Mikkel Hansen is the second player on this list who is still playing today, a testament to how the sport is rapidly growing. It won’t be long before current stars like Niklas Landin and Sander Sagosen are included as the greatest handball players of all-time.
Known for his flair and clutch performances when it matters most, the 35-year-old is the epitome of being cool under pressure.
Six foot four with his instantly recognisable long hair and sweatband, Hansen began his career with GOG in Gudme, Denmark, winning the Danish title, before heading to FC Barcelona in 2008 and then back to Denmark in 2010 to join AG København.
He cemented himself as a legend of the sport in his decade at Paris Saint-Germain, winning the French league nine times and 21 trophies in all.
But PSG just could not win the Champions League, despite having three of the four best players of all-time on their team.
It just goes to show that handball really is a team sport!
That is not to say individual awards do not have their value. Hansen has won plenty of them, most notably the IHF Player of the Year award in 2011, 2015 and 2018.
He was the 2016 Olympics MVP as Denmark took home gold, and he top-scored in 2020 when they had to settle for silver.
His first major tournament win was the Euros in 2012 and he went on to achieve European silver and bronze.
For a long time, it looked like the World Championship would elude him. He picked up silver in 2011 and 2013, but that all changed in 2019 when Denmark won the first of three successive world titles (adding 2021 and 2023 too). They became the first nation ever to complete such a treble.
Hansen was named MVP at the 2013 World Championships, and he also won the award in 2019 and 2021, proving that despite his advancing years, he was as important as ever to Danish handball.
Last year, he returned to Denmark to play for regular Champions League participants, Aalborg.
5. Talant Dujshebaev
He won the Soviet League in 1987
He was part of the team that won gold at the 1992 Olympics
He acted as coach for Ciudad Real
Rounding off our list is the only player to have played the bulk of his career in the 20th Century.
Talant Dujshebaev was born in what is now Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, and came through the youth ranks at CSKA Moscow, with whom he won the Soviet League in 1987 before landing the Champions League in 1988.
The centre-back played for the Soviet Union until its collapse. He was part of the Unified Team that won gold at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. This is the point where his story becomes much more Spanish than Soviet.
The same year he signed with Teka Cantabria, with whom he won a litany of trophies in a five-year spell, most notably the 1994 Champions League. He was named IHF Player of the Year in 1994 and again two years later.
In 1995, after three years playing for Russia in which he won the 1993 World Championship, Dujshebaev obtained Spanish citizenship and began representing Spain - his fourth national team.
He won two Olympic bronzes with Los Hispanos in the subsequent two games, plus two silvers and a bronze at the European Championships.
Back to club matters, after leaving Cantabria he spent four seasons playing in Germany, but returned to his adopted homeland in 2001, embarking on six years with Ciudad Real.
In the final two of those years, his role changed to player-manager, and in 2006 he guided his teammates to Champions League glory.
After hanging up his shoes, he became Ciudad Real’s coach full-time and won the biggest prize again in 2008 and 2009.
Known for his intelligence on the court, it is no surprise that today he is considered one of the greatest coaches in the sport’s history.
Dujshebaev has managed Polish side Kielce for nine years, earning their maiden Champions League title in 2016.
His sons, Alex and Daniel, are both Spanish internationals and they play under him at Kielce, where together they took silver in the 2022-23 Champions League.
Have we missed anyone off our list? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!
Featured image credits: Tportal.hr
