The Brightest Stars in Handball History: Magnus Wislander

GamingZion presents Magnus Wislander, a player whose career left deep traits in the development and the popularity of handball.

Magnus Wislander is a living legend of world handball. The attribute “handball player of the century” that the European Handball Federation (EHF) ascribed to Wislander says it all. The now 51 years old Swedish player is an icon of THW Kiel, where he played for 12 years as well as a synonym for the Swedish handball. GamingZion looks back in the career of this giant on the six meter line, one of the greatest pivots in the history of handball.

Magnus Wislander’s beginnings and the development into all round player

The Swedish city of Goteborg is the place where on February 22, 1964, the best Scandinavian handball player was born. As online gambling sites in Sweden report, he started his career in the Tuve IF team, as a 10 year old boy, and signed his first professional contract at an incredible age of fifteen for the Redbergslids in the Swedish First Division. Wislander had psychical predispositions for becoming one of the greatest in handball. 194 centimeters high and unusually long arms were features that in the beginning of his career made an amazing playmaker out of him and an even better defender.

• 1990 IHF player of the year
• Complete all round player
• Unfulfilled Olympic dream

Nowadays it is not that unusual to speak about a playmaker that is 1,94 m high. Some of the best playmakers of today like Domagoj Duvnjak, Aron Palmarsson, Joan Canellas, Andy Schmidt are all over 190 cm tall. However in the 90-ties this trend was somehow opposite. Playmakers began to be those that disposed with fast technique of play with the ball, with great view on the game, and that of course were short. If we have in mind that the playmaker Ljuba Vranjes, a compatriot of Wislander who played with him in the Swedish representation, was only 166, then it becomes understandable why he moved to the pivot position in the years to come. But this move was only strategic, it was a move that corresponded to the change of the game in general. What he was doing on both positions was of equal high quality that for many players is simply an unreachable limit.

As can be read in online sportsbooks in the EU, David Barufet, the former Spanish national team’s goalkeeper, didn’t spare the nice words concerning the all-round qualities that Wislander. “Wislander was a multitalented player. He firstly played as a playmaker, after that he became a pivot, and in each position he was an ace. He had a strong personality and was very complete”. He defended and attacked perfectly. Maybe he was not a 10 on any aspect of the game, but he was a 9 in everything. He did everything very well, Wislander was very effective and had and exceptional vision”.

Magnus Wislander: the golden man of Sweden and THW Kiel

Wislander is considered to be the leader of the Swedish golden handball generations. The period from 1994 to 2002 is rightly described in European handball as period of the Swedish handball empire. Such a domination of representation was not recorded until that time in the history of world’s handball. Wislanders career with the Swedish representation started on 1985, making his debut versus USSR. He soon became a cornerstone of a whole new generation of Swedish players. In the national jersey number 3 he played 384 matches, scoring 1185 and won 2 World Championships (1990 and 1999) and 4 European Championships (1994, 1998, 2000 and 2002). But beside all these golds, the Olympic dream of Magnus Wislander never came true. Sweden lost three consecutive finals in the Olympics, reaching only the second place on the podium.

In 1990, after the World Championship, he received by the IHF the Handball Player of the Year award, the most prestigious individual prize in the world of handball. Right after this championship, where Sweden won their third golden medal, Wislander signed for the German THW Kiel. It was not necessary to pass a lot of time in order for him to become an icon of the zebras. He scored 1,371 goals in 369 matches becoming a real leader of the team from the Schleswig-Holstein. During his 12 years in the Handball Bundesliga years, Wislander won 7 Bundesligas, 3 German Cups and 2 EHF Cups. In 2002 he decided to return to the club in which he made his debut in Sweden, ending his top level career. The Zebras made a great honor to Wislander on his last match, retiring his jersey with the number 2 in the heights of the Sparkassen Arena.