Magnus Wislander
Cristina Neagu
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Magnus Wislander leads 2 of 2 categories. Our all-time ranking places Magnus Wislander at #3 and Cristina Neagu at #5.
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 Cristina Neagu
The only player of either sex to win the IHF World Player of the Year award four times, in 2010, 2015, 2016 and 2018, and the all-time leading scorer in the EHF Champions League. Neagu is the argument that individual greatness and team silverware are separable. Romania have not won a major senior title in her lifetime, and their best result in her era was World Championship bronze in 2015, a tournament in which she was both top scorer and most valuable player. At club level she won three Champions Leagues, with Buducnost in 2012 and 2015 and CSM Bucuresti in 2016, and she has scored more than 1,000 goals for Romania. A left back who shoots from a standing position with a whip-like release rather than a jump, she twice ruptured a cruciate ligament, in 2012 and 2018, and both times came back to win the world award. In a sport dominated by a handful of federations, she is its most celebrated individual from outside them.