Handball:all-time great players and award winners

 

Information on some of the greatest players in the sport of Handball. For more details about the sport go to the website of the International Handball Federation (IHF)

The winners of the IHF Player of the Year award for men and women.  There was no award for 2017 because of the low response in the public vote which makes up part of the overall winner decision.

MEN
1988 Veselin Vujovic Yugoslavia
1989 Kang Jae-Won South Korea
1990 Magnus Wislander Sweden
1991 No vote
1992 No vote
1993 No vote
1994 Talant Dujshebaev Russia
1995 Jackson Richardson France
1996 Talant Dujshebaev Spain
1997 Stéphane Stoecklin France
1998 Daniel Stephan Germany
1999 Rafael Guijosa Spain
2000 Dragan Škrbic Yugoslavia
2001 Yoon Kyung-Shin South Korea
2002 Bertrand Gille France
2003 Ivano Balic Croatia
2004 Henning Fritz Germany
2005 Árpád Sterbik Serbia and Montenegro
2006 Ivano Balic Croatia
2007/2014/2016 Nikola Karabatic France
2008 Thierry Omeyer France
2009 Slawomir Szmal Poland
2010 Filip Jícha Czech Republic

2011/2015 Mikkel Hansen Denmark

2012 Daniel Narcisse France

2013 Domagoj Duvnjak Croatia

Won three times by Nikola Karabatic and twice by Dujshebaev, Balic and Hansen.

WOMEN

1988 Svetlana Kitic Yugoslavia
1989 Kim Hyun-Mee South Korea
1990 Jasna Kolar-Merdan Austria
1991 No vote
1992 No vote
1993 No vote
1994 Mia Hermansson Sweden
1995 Erzsébet Kocsis Hungary
1996 Lim O-Kyeong South Korea
1997 Anja Andersen Denmark
1998 Trine Haltvik Norway
1999 Ausra Fridrikas Austria
2000 Bojana Radulovics Hungary
2001 Cecilie Leganger Norway
2002 Zhai Chao China
2003 Bojana Radulovics Hungary
2004 Anita Kulcsár Hungary
2005 Anita Görbicz Hungary
2006 Nadine Krause Germany
2007 Gro Hammerseng Norway
2008 Linn-Kristin Riegelhuth Norway
2009 Allison Pineau France
2010/2015/2016 Cristina Neagu Romania

2011 Heidi Loke Norway

2012 Alexandra do Nascimento Brazil

2013 Andrea Lekic Serbia

2014 Eduarda Amorim Brazil

This has been won twice by Radulovics and three times by Neagu.

Other players have been voted best players in the world before the official award was instigated and the Romanian Ștefan Birtalan was elected World Player of the Year in 1974, 1976 and 1977.

In 1992, Gheorghe Gruia of Romania was named Best Player of All Time by the International Handball Federation.

In 2000, the Swedish Magnus Wislander and the Ukrainian Zinaida Turchyna were elected Players of the 20th Century by the IHF.

In 2010 a poll was held for the public to vote for the best all-time male and female handball players.  The women’s nominations were:

Svetlana Dasic-Kitic (Former Yugoslavia),Anja Andersen (Denmark),Waltraud Kretzchmar (Germany) and Sinaida Turtschina (USSR – Ukraine).

The winner was Svetlana Kitic – In 1980 she won an Olympic silver medal with the Yugoslav team. Four years later she won the gold medal as member of the Yugoslav team. In all her representative career she played 202 matches and scored 911 goals.

The men’s nominations were Nikola Karabatic of France,Talant Dujshebaev of Russia/Spain,and Ivano Balic of Croatia.

The winner was Ivano Balic –  48,7 %  voted for the Croatian international, who became Olympic Champion 2004, World Champion 2003, runner-up at World (2005, 2009) and European Championships (2008, 2010) with his national team.  Balic  has been awarded World Handball Player of the Year twice (2003, 2006) and Most Valuable Player (MVP) at several major tournaments.