Nikola Karabatic
Anja Andersen
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Nikola Karabatic leads 4 of 4 categories. Our all-time ranking places Nikola Karabatic at #1 and Anja Andersen at #8.
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 Anja Andersen
Handball's great disruptor. Andersen played centre back for Denmark with a combination of technical genius and open provocation - she talked, she gestured, she attempted shots nobody else would consider - and she was the engine of the team that changed the women's game. Denmark won the European Championship in 1994 and 1996, Olympic gold in Atlanta in 1996 and the world title in 1997, the year Andersen was named IHF World Player of the Year. Then it stopped: a heart condition forced her retirement in 1998 at 29, at the peak of her powers. She moved straight into coaching and was just as successful and just as combustible, building Slagelse into a European power that won successive Champions League titles in 2004 and 2005 while collecting bans of her own along the way. Denmark's women went on to win three consecutive Olympic golds from 1996 to 2004; Andersen started it.