Mikkel Hansen
Thierry Omeyer
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Thierry Omeyer leads 3 of 4 categories. Our all-time ranking places Mikkel Hansen at #2 and Thierry Omeyer at #7.
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 Thierry Omeyer
Routinely named by his peers as the best goalkeeper the sport has had, and the spine of the most successful national team ever assembled. Omeyer won Olympic gold in 2008 and 2012 and silver in 2016, four world titles with France (2009, 2011, 2015 and 2017) and three European Championships (2006, 2010 and 2014), and was IHF World Player of the Year in 2008, an award goalkeepers almost never win. At club level he took the Champions League four times, once with Montpellier and three times with THW Kiel, including the 2011-12 season in which Kiel won all 34 of their Bundesliga matches. His method was minimalist: a low, wide stance, almost no early commitment, and a willingness to leave one corner visible in order to invite the shot he had prepared for. He regularly finished major tournaments with save rates near forty percent, the informal threshold that separates a very good goalkeeper from a tournament-winning one.