Mikkel Hansen
Cristina Neagu
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Cristina Neagu leads 2 of 3 categories. Our all-time ranking places Mikkel Hansen at #2 and Cristina Neagu at #5.
The case for Mikkel Hansen
The defining backcourt shooter of the 2010s and the player who turned Denmark from a good handball nation into the dominant one. Hansen won the IHF World Player of the Year award three times, in 2011, 2015 and 2018, matching the men's record, and collected Olympic gold in Rio in 2016 as the tournament's leading scorer, silver in Tokyo, and gold again in Paris in 2024 in the last match of his career. He was central to three consecutive world titles, in 2019, 2021 and 2023, and his European Championship came in 2012, when Denmark beat Serbia in Belgrade and he was named the tournament's most valuable player. A left-hander who shot from well beyond nine metres with a flat, ferocious release and passed like a playmaker, he won the Champions League with Barcelona in 2011 and then spent a decade as the axis of Paris Saint-Germain. He is Denmark's record international scorer and retired at 36.
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.