Almost 11,000 website users took part in this voting - the question was "Who"s the best male handball player ever?" 48,7 % voted for the Croatian player, who became Olympic Champion 2004, World Champion 2003, runner-up at World (2005, 2009) and European Championships (2008, 2010) with his national team.

On individual level, Balic has been awarded World Handball Player of the Year twice (2003, 2006) and Most Valuable Player (MVP) at several major tournaments.

He was a member of the all-star teams even more often.

The center back player of Zagreb and Croatia outclassed Nikola Karabatic who received 33,7 % in in the voting on www.ihf.info. The French is ahead of Talant Dushebajew with 16,5 %.

Serbian player Svetlana Kitic had been voted best female player of all time by the users of www.ihf.info.