BIOGRAPHY
Kiril Lazarov is regarded as one of the best players of all time, but he is also one of the few players in the Hall of Fame never to have won a major international title for his country.
Lazarov was born in Sveti Nikole in what is now North Macedonia in 1980 and followed his father into handball. He began his senior career at RK Borec, before moving to RK Pelister, but at the age of only 20 moved abroad to join Zagreb for the first of two stints at the club.
In 2010 he moved across to Spain to play for Ciudad Real and then Atlético Madrid, but made his biggest impact at FC Barcelona, with whom he won the EHF Champions League in 2015. He finished his club playing career at HBC Nantes, helping them reach the Champions League final in 2018.
But it is for North Macedonia that Lazarov has had the biggest impact, with his goal-scoring abilities second to none. He scored 92 goals in just nine games at the 2009 IHF Men’s World Championship, a world record. At the EHF EURO 2012, Lazarov was top scorer with 61 goals - also a record, until it was beaten by Sander Sagosen in 2020.
Lazarov became the first player to score 1,000 goals in the EHF Champions League in 2015.
Across his national career, Lazarov played 236 games and scored 1,728 goals, which at the time of writing in February 2024 puts him third on the all-time list of top scorers for national teams.
Lazarov took over as North Macedonia national coach in 2021, initially as a player-coach, but by 2022 had shifted to focusing entirely on managing the side. In 2022 he also became head coach of RK Alkaloid in Skopje.
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