Article by Cezar Titor – Published on Thursday, 09 April 2026, 12:13 / Updated on Thursday, 09 April 2026 12:14
The success with the Squadra Azzurra marked the moment of the emergence of “Il Luce” on the international stage, which he would “tame”, with the calm of the great masters, in the decades that followed. It was one of the first peaks of his career, a true “masterpiece”, as he himself called it.
April 16, 1983. A spring evening when Romania wrote history in capital letters, defeating Italy, the titular world champion, score 1-0, at the “23 August” stadium. A resounding result, against a team that, just a few months earlier, had knocked Brazil, Argentina and West Germany to their knees en route to the 1982 'Copa Mundial'.
The match counted for the Euro '84 preliminaries: only 8 teams participated in the final tournament: strictly the winners of the 7 groups and the host country.
Mircea Lucescu: “We will throw all our forces into battle to implement everything we know”
“We will throw all our forces into the fight to implement everything we know” was Mircea Lucescu's statement on the front page of the “Sportul” newspaper, in the preamble to the dispute on the mythical “23 August”, a stadium in the stands of which over 80,000 spectators were present for the game with the Peninsulars, who were also the protagonists of a pyrotechnic show in an archaic stage, with torches made of newspapers.
The statements of Mircea Lucescu and Enzo Bearzot, front page of Romanian Sport, April 16, 1983
Bearzot's “sacred monsters” were playing their last card in Bucharest. It was the fourth game out of a total of eight, and Romania was in first place in the group standings, with 5 points. Czechoslovakia, Italy and Sweden followed, each with 3 points, and Cyprus closed the group with 2 points.
Italy came to Bucharest with its back against the wall. A failure would have almost definitively compromised the “Azzurri”'s chances of qualificationwhile a victory of the team prepared by Lucescu would have decisively brought Romania closer to the first Euro in history.
Our national team won 1-0 and lost only one match until the end of the campaign, the one in Bucharest against Czechoslovakia. At the end of the preliminaries, the “tricolors” finished the group in first place, with 12 points, followed by Sweden (11 points), Czechoslovakia (10), Italy (5) and Cyprus (2).
“They are world champions, but they are normal people”
The success could also be classified as a psychological one, as it emerged from the testimonies of Mircea Lucescu.
“We played against Sweden, we won 2-0. After the match, in which Bearzot was also present, a special evening followed. Nea Ion Chirilă and Mache Ionescu invited Bearzot for a beer, on the Lido terrace. I was nice to him, I invited him to my house, I offered him a pipe, he was passionate about that kind of thing.
Later, he also invited me to Rome for Italy's first match after winning the World Cup in 1982. They were playing against Switzerland and, surprisingly, they lost 1-0. After the match, he invited me to the official table. We sat next to Bearzot, and in front of us was Dino Zoff. They were discussing what went wrong, the players, the game, the team.
I was still listening very attentively. I wanted to go back home and tell our boys: “Look, they are world champions, but they are normal, modest people”, said “Il Luce” in an interview given to Gazeta Sporturilor for the homage documentary released last year: “Il Luce. The Master”.
After a 0-0 draw in Firenze, Romania prevailed in the spring. Lucescu gave a tactical checkmate to Enzo Bearzot, the selector's plan orbiting around Ilie Balaci. That evening, the “Blonde Wonder” shone! He ridiculed Claudio Gentile, the one who annihilated the great Diego Maradona in Italy – Argentina 2-1, at the '82 World Cup. He won all five straight duels with it.
78%was the percentage of duels won by Balaci, the highest of all Lucescu's team
In the 24th minute, he was also the one who laced up Boloni's free-kick, the latter beating the great Dino Zoff with a “torpedo” from outside the box.
Ilie Balaci passes to Laszlo Boloni, who catapults the ball into Zoff's net, in the great victory of 1983 with the world champions Italy
Lucescu also anticipated our team's success: “I also remember the press conference before the match. Then I said: «This match can be won by a free kick». It was my statement, because I knew very well what our strengths were, and where they were vulnerable. I knew exactly where we could go and what we had to do to succeed.”
It was the most important match. It was, perhaps, the first time that Romania defeated a world champion, and not just any champion, but Italy. The match against Italy was a true masterpiece: prepared in the smallest detail: the team, the atmosphere, the full stadium, the expectations of the people. Everything was built around that moment.
– Mircea Lucescu
“A success of proportions with an echo all over the world” was the title of Romanian Sport, after Romania – Italy 1-0
In the final tournament, held in a restricted format, with only eight participating teams, Romania obtained a point after a 1-1 draw with Spain, but lost the other two games, against West Germany and Portugal, thus missing the qualification from the group.
