Mircea Lucescu

Mircea Lucescu is a Romanian professional football player and coach born on July 29, 1945, in Bucharest, Romania. He holds Romanian citizenship and is currently employed as the manager of FC Dynamo Kyiv, which is located in Kyiv.

In his career, Lucescu has received various awards and distinctions, such as the Cupa României, Supercupa României, and UEFA Cup. He has also been a manager in association football and a coach.

Răzvan Lucescu, also involved in football, is Mircea Lucescu's child and represents the Romanian nationality.

Lucescu Mircea is one of the most titled coaches in the world. For 12 years he coached Shakhtar Donetsk, with which he won 22 trophies. In 2020, he headed another Ukrainian grand - Dynamo.

Mircea Lucescu was born on July 29, 1945 in Bucharest, Romania.

In 1961, Mircea received a certificate from the 2nd Bucharest Sports School. He has a diploma from the Bucharest Academy of Economic Sciences.

Lucescu speaks six foreign languages: English, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French and Russian.

Mircea has been married since 1965. The wife's name is Nellie. She is a year older than Lucescu. Nelly has Ukrainian roots. Her mother and grandmother before the Second World War lived in the city of Belgorod-Dniester, Odessa region.

In 1969, the couple had a son, Razvan. From 1987 to 2003 he was a footballer. Played for a number of Romanian clubs. Then Razvan started his coaching career. In 2021, he headed the Greek PAOK.

Lucescu played as a striker. During his twenty-year career as a football player, Lucescu played in three clubs. From 1963 to 1977 he played for Dinamo Bucharest. During this time he played 250 matches in which he scored 57 goals. With "Dynamo" he became the champion of Romania six times and twice won the Cup of the country. From 1965 to 1967 he played on loan at the Sportul club.

Mircea spent the last five years of his football career (1977 - 1982) defending the colors of Corvinul. For the club from the Romanian city of Hunedoara, he played 111 games, in which he scored 21 times.

Lucescu played for the Romanian national team from 1966 to 1979. Participated in the 1970 World Cup. He was the captain of the Romanian national team.

Then the Romanians had three meetings and took third place in the group, losing to the world champions of the England team (0:1) and the future winners of the World Cup - the Brazilians (2:3). But they were able to defeat the national team of Czechoslovakia (2:1). Interestingly, after the match with the Brazilian national team, Mircea exchanged jerseys with the great Pele.

Already in 1979, Mircea became a playing coach at Corvinul. The club from Hunedoara has never missed the stars from the sky. But under Lucescu, the team rose from the first league to the top, and then won bronze championship awards. Then the mentor of "Korvinul" was only 37 years old.

Thanks to this phenomenal success, in 1981 Mircea was entrusted with the post of coach of the national team. Three years later, Lucescu managed to bring Romania to a major tournament, the European Championship, for the first time in 14 years. True, at Euro 84, the Romanians were able to get only one point, having drawn with Spain.

Then Lucescu's wards remained one step away from entering the 1986 World Cup. In the qualifying tournament, the Romanians were only one point behind the Northern Ireland team, losing to their rival at home in the penultimate round. In 1986, Mircea left the post of coach of the national team.

Back in 1985, he headed his native club - Dynamo. Over the course of five years, Lucescu won the Cup twice and once became the champion of Romania. In addition, in the 1989/1990 season, the Bucharest club reached the semi-finals of the Cup Winners' Cup.

After leaving Dynamo, Mircea went to Italy. For six years (from 1990 to 1996) Lucescu worked with three modest clubs - Pisa, Brescia and Reggiana. With these teams, the Romanian specialist has not achieved any success, except for two exits to Serie A with Brescia.

In 1997, Mircea returned to his homeland. One season he led another metropolitan team - "Rapid". With this club, Lucescu won the Romanian Cup and finished second in the championship.

Then for four months Mircea led the Milan "Inter". But after the Nerazzurri slipped to ninth place and lost heavily to Sampdoria (0:4), the Romanian coach was fired. In April 1999, he returned to Rapid, and helped the Bucharest club win the league for the first time since 1967.

In 2000, the Turkish stage of Lucescu's work began. For two years he led the clubs "Galatasaray" and "Besiktas". With both teams, the Romanian coach won gold medals in the national championship once. In addition, with Galatasaray, Mircea won the European Super Cup and successfully played in the Champions League. Besiktas could not win the Turkish championship for eight years. Already in the first year of Lucescu's coaching, the "black-and-whites" won the coveted title.

Lucescu won the most awards with Shakhtar Donetsk, which the Romanian specialist took over in May 2004. Over 12 years, the miners have won 22 trophies: eight championships, six Cups and eight Super Cups of Ukraine.

But Shakhtar's biggest success under Lucescu was the UEFA Cup victory in the 2008/2009 season. Then, in the decisive match, the miners snatched a victory with a score of 2:1 from the German Werder Bremen only in extra time.

It was Lucescu who introduced the trend at Shakhtar to buy Latin American young talents, in particular from Brazil. Then the miners successfully resold them.

In the spring of 2016, Mircea took the helm of the St. Petersburg "Zenith". The contract was for two years, but the coach worked in the northern capital of Russia for only one year.

With the St. Petersburg club, the mentor won the Russian Super Cup, but took only third place in the championship. Unsuccessfully, Zenit performed in the Europa League. The team won the group stage, but was already eliminated at the 1/16 final stage.

According to the Romanian specialist, the work in the Russian club was a mistake. For premature termination of the contract, Zenit paid 2.5 million euros.

In 2017, Mircea returned to Turkey, leading the national team. Under the leadership of Lucescu, the Turks played 17 matches, winning only four.

From February 2019 to June 2020, the coach was out of work. Then Lucescu accepted an offer to head another Ukrainian giant - Dynamo Kiev. Already in the first season, Mircea led the people of Kiev to three domestic trophies - victory in the championship, the Cup and the Super Cup of Ukraine. In June 2021, the mentor signed a new contract with Dynamo for two years with the possibility of an extension for another year.

In over 40 years of coaching, Lucescu has won 35 trophies, becoming one of the most titled coaches in the world. In 2009, he was recognized as the best mentor in Europe.

The Romanian coach has published several of his books. In 1981, he published an autobiography, and in 2011, My Mining Truth was published.

By 1990, Mircea had been a coach for eight years. At the end of the Romanian championship of the 1989/1990 season, the local football federation made a rather controversial decision: the national team players were banned from playing in the championship. This was done in order to give them a rest and prepare for the upcoming World Cup.

Due to this ban, only six players remained in the Dynamo Bucharest squad. Lucescu offered to stop the championship, but they did not listen to him. When he released two collections in one of the games, he was disqualified for three months.

The coach had to recruit veterans of the team. Mircea also decided to enter the championship himself. At that time he was less than 45 years old. In the match with "Sportul" the coach came on as a substitute for the last 15 minutes. In the game, Mircea, according to the recollections of eyewitnesses, looked quite decent.

Seeing how the 45-year-old coach plowed the field, the team cheered up and even gave a brilliant finish with the second team, winning the championship.

In early 2012, Mircea had an accident in his native Bucharest. While driving his wife's car, he crashed into a tram. After this collision, the car was thrown onto another car. Lucescu received a bruised lung and a fracture of seven ribs. Doctors found blood in the chest. He had to spend half a month in the hospital.

The Romanian prosecutor's office opened a criminal case on the fact of the accident. Mircea was charged with "creating the conditions for a mass accident and causing harm to the health of third parties."

While coaching the Turkish national team, Lucescu got into a corruption scandal. In the location of the national team, he called the defender Erol Alkan from the Dutch Dordrecht, who then floundered at the bottom of the second league.

Turkish journalists conducted an investigation and found out that the player's agents, through their connections, achieved a call to Alkan's national team in order to first increase his transfer fee, and then resell him to a more successful club.

As a result of the scandal, Alkan never played for the national team, and Lucescu promised to sue the journalists for libel. However, he did not do so. The Turkish Football Federation fired the coach himself after just a couple of months.

Lucescu often accused football referees of biased refereeing. So, after the defeat of Shakhtar in the match with Simferopol Tavriya in March 2008, police officers had to protect the referees from the impressive coach. In July 2011, he allowed himself sexist remarks about linesman Natalya Rachinskaya.

In the autumn of 2006, during the match of the Ukrainian championship between Shakhtar and Dynamo, the Portuguese referee Paulo Costa sent off the Pitmen's coach. After that, Mircea threw his hat on the field and shouted: “Bravo, Federation!”, hinting that the football federation plays along with the people of Kiev.

Scandalous Lucescu in the Turkish national team. In 2017, he was suspended for one match for arguing with a referee. The Romanian mentor, during the qualifying match for the World Cup with Ukraine (0:2), ran up to the referee David Borbalan with a smartphone and tried to show video replays of the controversial moments.

The appointment of Lucescu as the coach of Dynamo Kyiv in the summer of 2020 was a bolt from the blue for the capital's fans. After all, for 12 years the Romanian specialist has been coaching Dynamo's sworn enemy, Shakhtar Donetsk. Then Lucescu often spoke very incorrectly about the capital club. In addition, after the Pitmen, Mircea headed the Russian club.

Dynamo fans opposed the appointment of Lucescu. They staged protests and burned flares under the command base. Fans even blindfolded the monument to Valery Lobanovsky so that the great coach would not see everything that was happening in the club.

Even two legends of the club and the owners of the Golden Balls Igor Belanov and Oleg Blokhin spoke out against Lucescu in Dynamo. The first compared the appointment of Lucescu with a betrayal of Lobanovsky's legacy, and the second said that he would not root for the people of Kiev as long as they were led by a Romanian mentor.

The pressure from the media and fans was so strong that Lucescu decided to resign four days after signing the contract. But Dynamo president Igor Surkis persuaded Mircea to stay at the club.

During the 2020/2021 season, the coach got into skirmishes with Kyiv fans more than once. So, in April, at the match of the semi-final of the Cup with Agribusiness, shouts could be heard from the stands : “Lucescu, go away”. The coach himself said that he does not consider those who urge him to leave Dynamo as fans of the club.

Despite the hostility of the fans, the Romanian coach managed to end Shakhtar's hegemony on the Ukrainian throne, which lasted four years, and lead Dynamo to the championship.

In the Donetsk club, the coach's salary was $4.3 million a year. In St. Petersburg, he earned almost 6 million dollars. Mircea received two million for his work with the Turkish national team. In Dynamo, his salary in the first season was 1.5 million. He received another million dollars for winning the national championship.

During the period from 2012 to 2014, the Romanian coach paid almost 52 million hryvnias in taxes, becoming the fourth largest taxpayer in Ukraine.

After moving to Donetsk, Mircea settled in the five-star Donbass Palace Hotel. A few months later, he moved to a 3-storey building on the outskirts of Donetsk. A large garden with a fountain adjoined the house.

After the outbreak of hostilities in the Donbass, the miners moved to Kyiv. In the capital, Shakhtar settled in the Opera Hotel. Then many players and the coach rented or bought apartments, mainly in the Novopecherskie Lipki residential complex.

After returning to Ukraine in 2020, the coach decided to settle at the Dynamo club base.