Magnus Wislander
Katrine Lunde
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 Magnus Wislander at #3 and Katrine Lunde at #4.
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 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.