Article by Alin Buzărin – Published Thursday, November 13, 2025, 5:16 p.m. / Updated Thursday, November 13, 2025, 5:17 p.m.
Doctors can solve the football great's physical suffering. For the other suffering, the rest of us must help him
Cornel Dinu has been suffering for many years. Not only from a strictly medical point of view, although an open heart operation, one on the hip, another for a hernia, plus the problems now, is no small thing for a 77-year-old man. But his strong body can still overcome all these troubles, those who have seen him play know very well what “hunting” and what regeneration force the former great footballer had.
Close companionship
But before suffering physically, Cornel Dinu suffers morally. Not mentally, but morally, which means something else entirely. He stays between the four walls (in the old days he greeted you dressed in a dressing gown with silk lapels, that “robe de chambre” of the olden boyars), now he doesn't abandon his pajamas for months. Her closest companions are Merlin and Margot, an elderly but affectionate golden retriever and a playful Bichon. E are his immediate world, both sleeping on his chest.
Cornel Dinu
friends
This summer, on his birthday (actually on their birthday, one was born on July 29, the other on August 2), Mircea Lucescu passed the threshold. Then, it is known, he refused all invitations to go out in public, made either by great Dynamo players (Borcea, Augustin, Danciulescu), or by friends he has in the press, because Dinu has many friends in the press, as in the old days he chose his entourage among the great writers and actors. Boanchiș, Ghering, Ivanovici, Bratu, Culina, Furdui (the last one called me yesterday, to ask me what I knew about him, and I told him nothing but what I read, because I didn't dare to call him, respecting his suffering).
When he found himself
Years ago, we used to talk almost every day (more correctly, night after night), at length, we shared our personal and professional troubles. Over time, phones became rarer, Cornel was laconic, disappointed with everything that happens in society and in football.
I urged him to write, he was doing it at Fanatik, he also intervened by phone there. There were times when he threw aside the veil of depression and seemed the same as always. Caustic, overflowing with humor, impossible to contain. Because after putting the pen down, they would hang up the phone, the fog of gray thoughts to overtake him again.
The floor, the lounge, the ward
Until now, when it was found out that he was rushed to the hospital with a heart problem. Out of nowhere, a bunch of people interested in his fate appeared. Some of them made the journalists deontologists, accurate and documented and publicly revealed not only the name of the hospital where he is hospitalized, but also the ward, the floor, the salon. The personnel file of the nurse who administers the infusions was also missing.
This is the world, full of pretend friends, of those who last year, one day after the hip operation, published pictures that should never have appeared. The always slim and elegant Cornel Dinu was in those images emaciated, pale, supported in a metallic frame. If such a thing means quality journalism (I'm not talking about pretended friendship), it means that I personally went through this job without knowing anything about it.
Lots of 5's and 6's
It's time for Dinu to be left alone, not to be discovered or called a thousand times. The proximity of those close to him, but also of Merlin and Margot, will be enough for him for the moment. Help him by sending him a good thought without letting him know about it. When he figures it out, he'll call you back. Personally, I look forward to seeing his name on the phone screen and those many 5's and many 6's, the numbers he played with on the back. Health and peace, dear Cornel Dinu!
