Nikola Karabatic
Andrey Lavrov
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Nikola Karabatic leads 2 of 3 categories. Our all-time ranking places Nikola Karabatic at #1 and Andrey Lavrov at #9.
The case for Nikola Karabatic
The most decorated player the sport has produced and its nearest thing to a consensus choice. Across 22 seasons Karabatic won three Olympic gold medals (2008, 2012 and 2020), four World Championships (2009, 2011, 2015 and 2017) and three European Championships (2006, 2010 and 2014) with France, plus the Champions League with three different clubs - Montpellier, THW Kiel and Barcelona. He was named IHF World Player of the Year three times, in 2007, 2014 and 2016, a men's record he shares with Mikkel Hansen. Born in Nis to a Yugoslav international goalkeeper who later coached in France, he stood close to two metres and could play either left back or centre back at the highest level, which is why coaches shifted him between the two hardest backcourt roles without losing anything. He also defended, unusually for a player of his offensive value. He retired after the Paris 2024 Olympics with more than 300 caps and a trophy cabinet nobody in handball has matched.
The case for Andrey Lavrov
Three Olympic gold medals, won under three different flags, across twelve years. Lavrov kept goal for the Soviet Union when they won in Seoul in 1988, for the Unified Team in Barcelona in 1992, and for Russia in Sydney in 2000, then added a bronze in Athens in 2004 at the age of 42 - a span of Olympic relevance no other handball player has matched. In between he won world titles with Russia in 1993 and 1997 and the European Championship in 1996, the peak of the post-Soviet Russian side. He was a goalkeeper of extreme physical courage in an era when defenders were permitted more contact and shots arrived harder and flatter, and his reading of wing shooters was considered untouchable. He later coached and worked in the Russian federation. For most of the sport's history his three Olympic golds were simply the record, and only Karabatic and Katrine Lunde have since equalled them.