Thierry Omeyer
Anita Gorbicz
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Thierry Omeyer leads 2 of 3 categories. Our all-time ranking places Thierry Omeyer at #7 and Anita Gorbicz at #11.
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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.
The case for Anita Gorbicz
The one-club great. Gorbicz spent essentially her entire career at Gyori Audi ETO KC, turning a Hungarian provincial club into the dominant force in European women's handball and winning five Champions League titles there - in 2013, 2014, 2017, 2018 and 2019 - alongside a long series of Hungarian league and cup doubles. She was named IHF World Player of the Year in 2005, at 22, after Hungary took bronze at the World Championship, and she stands among the highest-scoring players in Champions League history. A centre back with an exceptionally quick first step, she built her game on beating the first defender and then playing the pivot in, and she was the reference point for the position in the women's game for fifteen years. Hungary never converted her talent into a major title - fourth at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 was the closest they came - which is why she is better known inside the sport than outside it.