Neagu to bid farewell at end of 2024/25 season

Neagu had already retired from the national team, playing her last match with Romania at the 2023 World Championship. That brought her focus completely to club handball, where she has been wearing the jersey of CSM Bucuresti since 2017/18, representing her home city. And it is with CSM that her career will end — naturally, she hopes at one last EHF FINAL4 in Budapest.

The handball world has said goodbye to a number of legends recently, with a string of retirements following the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. And we are braced for more as now two of the four players in the EHF Champions League Women “club of 1,000” have announced this as their last season, the other being Jovanka Radicevic.

Neagu’s membership in that exclusive Champions League club reflects 18 seasons in the top-flight competition, starting with Corono Brasov in 2006/07 and really breaking through later, with Ramnicu Valcea in 2009/10. That season, she scored 65 Champions League goals, played the final for the first time, and, later in 2010, led Romania to the bronze medal at the EHF EURO, where she was both top scorer and All-star Team left back. Her achievements in 2010 earned Neagu her first of four IHF World Player of the Year awards — a record in handball across both the men’s and women’s games.

Neagu would go on to two more Champions League final participations, and took her sole title so far in the competition in 2014/15 with Buducnost, to where she transferred from Valcea in 2013/14 for her first and only club venture outside Romania. In 2015, she also won her second medal with Romania — bronze at the World Championship, where she was MVP, top scorer and All-star Team left back. She became 2015 IHF World Player of the Year, then won the award again in 2016 and 2018. Neagu is the only person to have won IHF World Player of the Year three times in a row, with no awarding in 2017.

The list of individual awards goes on. Neagu almost exclusively held the All-star Team left back position in the EHF Champions League, with seven nods in eight consecutive season — from 2015 to 2018 then another three back-to-back from 2020 to 2022. She was also top scorer of the competition no less than three times and was named Left back of the season at the EHF Excellence Awards 2023. She was four-time All-star Team left back at the EHF EURO, and is the only person to have passed the 300-goal mark in the competition, with Gudjon Valur Sigurdsson holding the top position on the men’s side, counting 288 goals to Neagu’s 303.

Aside from the clear facts, Neagu has often been described as the best player in the world — and not only by fans, but by opponents who talk about playing against her. She brings far more than “just” her shot, having topped lists of most assists in numerous competitions as well, but that shot has pretty much earned the status of legend on its own. Now we know we have one last season in which to enjoy it.