Article by Alexandru Barbu – Published on Thursday, 09 April 2026, 15:13 / Updated on Thursday, 09 April 2026 15:19
We wonder hauntingly what remains invaluable after Mircea Lucescu. An answer is next to the catafalque. For 48 hours, almost non-stop, Răzvan Lucescu has not yet had his turn to suffer, he has to console others and shake 10,000 hands. A life, Mircea Lucescu shared everything. Răzvan took over the baton a long time ago, now he shares decency.
It's a devastating loss, regardless of age or background. You feel that Romanian sport is burying a parent.
It is not a definitively lost battle, because Mircea Lucescu has many children who carry on his legacy, not just Răzvan Lucescu. Pancu, Hagi and others like them stayed with the former selector long enough to teach the lessons to the next generations. It is needed.
Mircea Lucescu showed us the way. When he could no longer follow her, he died
It matters what you leave behind. It's a simple word, rolled around everywhere, in villages, in mansions, in official conferences, it's a header of Mircea Lucescu's life.
The coach who left us shockingly on Tuesday faced hunger in the slums of Bucharest when he was a child, he was forced to swallow the misfortunes of the war. He learned to share shoes with his brothers and, later, how great teams are born.
He shared so many valuable principles, so many lessons, that sometimes we got bored with them. We're tired of understanding him, we thought he was immortal anyway. We lived Mircea Lucescu before we valued him, as Cioran would have said.
Mircea Lucescu was a visionary, a creator, a polyglot, a tree in the shade of which the woods grew, obsessed with putting the pen in his students' hands, not just the ball in the bag. A machine of trophies and successes, a legend.
Did it also have flaws? Absolute. But, as my colleague Dani Grigore well weighed on the way to the subway, a chipped monument remains a monument. For whom passion ended with life. There was no other way.
Răzvan did not know how to explain. He knew how to be Lucescu
From today and forever, the reflection of the man Mircea Lucescu is Răzvan Lucescu. In fact, it has always been this way.
PAOK's coach flew to Romania as a matter of urgency, a few minutes after his match with Panathinaikos. He learned from home that football is above everything.
His father was about to die when journalists blinded him with their flashbulbs and asked him to speak. He was civil and dignified: “What can I say? It's a difficult, complicated situation. There are people at the hospital who will give you all the information. I don't know how to explain anything now.”
The images that run on a loop with Răzvan Lucescu are really overwhelmingon television, on websites, on YouTube. A few meters from his father's coffin, the coach stands straight and heartbreakingly naturally shakes the hand of at least 10,000 personalities and ordinary people who are currently saying goodbye to Mircea Lucescu.
With grace and humanity, Răzvan takes care of his family, the Lucescu name, he rarely allows himself to fill his eyes with tears. And when he does, he looks to the sky. He looked in the mirror.
