Anja Andersen
Talant Dujshebaev
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Talant Dujshebaev leads 2 of 4 categories. Our all-time ranking places Anja Andersen at #8 and Talant Dujshebaev at #10.
The case for Anja Andersen
Handball's great disruptor. Andersen played centre back for Denmark with a combination of technical genius and open provocation - she talked, she gestured, she attempted shots nobody else would consider - and she was the engine of the team that changed the women's game. Denmark won the European Championship in 1994 and 1996, Olympic gold in Atlanta in 1996 and the world title in 1997, the year Andersen was named IHF World Player of the Year. Then it stopped: a heart condition forced her retirement in 1998 at 29, at the peak of her powers. She moved straight into coaching and was just as successful and just as combustible, building Slagelse into a European power that won successive Champions League titles in 2004 and 2005 while collecting bans of her own along the way. Denmark's women went on to win three consecutive Olympic golds from 1996 to 2004; Andersen started it.
The case for Talant Dujshebaev
Born in Frunze in Soviet Kyrgyzstan, Dujshebaev won Olympic gold with the Unified Team in 1992, took Spanish citizenship, and then won Olympic bronze for Spain in 1996 and 2000 - a career that traced the political redrawing of the sport. He was named IHF World Player of the Year twice, in 1994 and 1996, as a centre back of unusual physical power who could shoot from nine metres and defend the middle of a 6-0 for a full match, a combination that barely exists now. He spent his best club years in Spain with Teka Santander and Ciudad Real, in the period when the Spanish league was the strongest in the world. His second career made him more influential still: as a coach he took Kielce to the Champions League title in 2016, and both his sons, Alex and Daniel, became Spanish internationals. Few people have shaped three handball nations.