Mikkel Hansen
Talant Dujshebaev
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Mikkel Hansen leads 3 of 3 categories. Our all-time ranking places Mikkel Hansen at #2 and Talant Dujshebaev at #10.
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 Talant Dujshebaev
Born in Frunze in Soviet Kyrgyzstan, Dujshebaev won Olympic gold with the Unified Team in 1992, took Spanish citizenship, and then won Olympic bronze for Spain in 1996 and 2000 - a career that traced the political redrawing of the sport. He was named IHF World Player of the Year twice, in 1994 and 1996, as a centre back of unusual physical power who could shoot from nine metres and defend the middle of a 6-0 for a full match, a combination that barely exists now. He spent his best club years in Spain with Teka Santander and Ciudad Real, in the period when the Spanish league was the strongest in the world. His second career made him more influential still: as a coach he took Kielce to the Champions League title in 2016, and both his sons, Alex and Daniel, became Spanish internationals. Few people have shaped three handball nations.