Magnus Wislander
Anja Andersen
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Magnus Wislander leads 3 of 4 categories. Our all-time ranking places Magnus Wislander at #3 and Anja Andersen at #8.
The case for Magnus Wislander
Voted Handball Player of the Century by the IHF in 2000, and the man who turned the pivot from a body into a position. A line player with a playmaker's hands, Wislander scored, screened and passed out of the six-metre chaos for THW Kiel across twelve seasons, winning the run of Bundesliga titles that made Kiel the biggest club in the sport. With Sweden's Bengan Boys he won world titles in 1990 and 1999 and four consecutive European Championships in 1994, 1998, 2000 and 2002, still the record for a men's national team. The gap in the record is the largest in handball history: Sweden lost three Olympic finals in a row, to the Unified Team in 1992, Croatia in 1996 and Russia in 2000, and Wislander finished close to 400 internationals with three silver medals and no gold. Ask coaches which pre-2000 player they would build a team around and his name still comes first.
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.