Ivano Balic
Anita Gorbicz
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Ivano Balic leads 3 of 3 categories. Our all-time ranking places Ivano Balic at #6 and Anita Gorbicz at #11.
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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 Anita Gorbicz
The one-club great. Gorbicz spent essentially her entire career at Gyori Audi ETO KC, turning a Hungarian provincial club into the dominant force in European women's handball and winning five Champions League titles there - in 2013, 2014, 2017, 2018 and 2019 - alongside a long series of Hungarian league and cup doubles. She was named IHF World Player of the Year in 2005, at 22, after Hungary took bronze at the World Championship, and she stands among the highest-scoring players in Champions League history. A centre back with an exceptionally quick first step, she built her game on beating the first defender and then playing the pivot in, and she was the reference point for the position in the women's game for fifteen years. Hungary never converted her talent into a major title - fourth at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 was the closest they came - which is why she is better known inside the sport than outside it.