Nikola Karabatic
Magnus Wislander
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 Magnus Wislander at #3.
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 Magnus Wislander
Voted Handball Player of the Century by the IHF in 2000, and the man who turned the pivot from a body into a position. A line player with a playmaker's hands, Wislander scored, screened and passed out of the six-metre chaos for THW Kiel across twelve seasons, winning the run of Bundesliga titles that made Kiel the biggest club in the sport. With Sweden's Bengan Boys he won world titles in 1990 and 1999 and four consecutive European Championships in 1994, 1998, 2000 and 2002, still the record for a men's national team. The gap in the record is the largest in handball history: Sweden lost three Olympic finals in a row, to the Unified Team in 1992, Croatia in 1996 and Russia in 2000, and Wislander finished close to 400 internationals with three silver medals and no gold. Ask coaches which pre-2000 player they would build a team around and his name still comes first.