Champions of 2025 – Handballer Cristina Neagu
2025 marked the retirement of the best Romanian handball player of all time.
Florin Orban, 24.10.2025, 13:45
To be the best in the world in a team sport like handball, it isn’t enough to score goals like no other. It is not enough to work harder than everyone else in training or to be the best on the field, one match after another. To be designated the best handballer in the world, not once, but four times, you have to be truly special. Therefore, the word that best characterizes Cristina Neagu as an athlete and as a person is “exceptional”. She was not the most beloved handball player in Romania… She was feared, criticized and often antagonized by the supporters of the opposing teams, even in Bucharest. But she was the rock on which the Romanian national team and the club teams she played for were based for years. She was, most of the times, the one who made the difference on the court. This year, at the age of 37, she retired from the world of sports.
Cristina Neagu was born in Bucharest, on August 26, 1988. She made her debut at the School Sports Club number 5. As a junior, she was named best player in the world on several occasions, starting 2005, when the Romanian team won silver at the European Junior Championships in Austria. In 2006, she entered the senior handball team, playing for Rulmentul Brașov, from where she later joined Oltchim Râmnicu Vâlcea. In 2010, with Oltchim, she reached the Champions League final. After the dissolution of the club in Vâlcea, she moved to the Montenegrin team Buducnost Podgorica, with which she won Champions League in 2015. In 2017, she returned to Romania, to CSM Bucharest. In 2010, 2015, 2016 and 2018, the International Handball Federation named her the best player in the world. She thus became the first handball player in history to win this trophy four times. She also went down in history as the best scorer in Champions League, with a total of 1,232 goals. Apart from her, only Montenegrin handball player Jovanka Radičević, Serbian player Andrea Lekić and Hungarian athlete Anita Görbicz scored more than 1,000 goals in Europe’s number one inter-club competition. Cristina Neagu’s achievements at the Romanian national team include a bronze medal at the 2010 European Championship in Denmark and Norway, and another bronze medal at the 2015 World Championships in Denmark. In European Championships, she scored 303 goals, holding the record for the inter-country continental competition, according to the website of the European Handball Federation. (VP)
