Katrine Lunde
Anja Andersen
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Katrine Lunde leads 4 of 4 categories. Our all-time ranking places Katrine Lunde at #4 and Anja Andersen at #8.
The case for Katrine Lunde
The most decorated goalkeeper in handball and, by trophy count, arguably the most decorated player of any kind. Lunde won Olympic gold with Norway in 2008, 2012 and 2024, and took a medal at five consecutive Games from Beijing to Paris, where she played the final at 44. She has three world titles, in 2011, 2015 and 2021, and a stack of European Championships from the Norwegian dynasty that has now won a record ten EHF Euro crowns. At club level she won the Champions League seven times with three different employers: Viborg in 2009 and 2010, Gyor in 2013 and 2014, and Vipers Kristiansand in 2021, 2022 and 2023. Her method is positional rather than acrobatic - she reads the shooter's hips, plants early and takes up an enormous amount of visual space - and her record in 7-metre duels has decided finals for two decades. Her twin sister Kristine played alongside her for Norway.
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.