Ivano Balic
Andrey Lavrov
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Andrey Lavrov leads 3 of 3 categories. Our all-time ranking places Ivano Balic at #6 and Andrey Lavrov at #9.
The case for Ivano Balic
For roughly five years in the mid-2000s, the most inventive player anyone had seen. Balic was a centre back who built his game on deception rather than power - a step-back fake that froze an entire defensive line, a no-look pass to a pivot he could not possibly have seen - and he was named IHF World Player of the Year in 2003 and 2006. He was the outstanding player of the 2003 World Championship, which Croatia won at home in Zagreb, and of the Athens 2004 Olympic tournament, which Croatia also won. With him as the fulcrum Croatia added world silver in 2005 and 2009 and European silver in 2008 and 2010, a run of near misses that would define a lesser player. In an IHF online poll in 2010 he was voted the best handball player of all time, a verdict that says as much about how he played as about what he won. Coaches still show his footage to teach the value of the pause.
The case for Andrey Lavrov
Three Olympic gold medals, won under three different flags, across twelve years. Lavrov kept goal for the Soviet Union when they won in Seoul in 1988, for the Unified Team in Barcelona in 1992, and for Russia in Sydney in 2000, then added a bronze in Athens in 2004 at the age of 42 - a span of Olympic relevance no other handball player has matched. In between he won world titles with Russia in 1993 and 1997 and the European Championship in 1996, the peak of the post-Soviet Russian side. He was a goalkeeper of extreme physical courage in an era when defenders were permitted more contact and shots arrived harder and flatter, and his reading of wing shooters was considered untouchable. He later coached and worked in the Russian federation. For most of the sport's history his three Olympic golds were simply the record, and only Karabatic and Katrine Lunde have since equalled them.