Article by Alexandru Barbu – published Tuesday, July 29, 2025, 01:03 / Updated Tuesday, July 29, 2025 01:31
The new generations will not count their trophies, they will debate how the influence of the legendary coach in Romanian football, with images that are seen on Facebook and Instagram. But they will be objectives, not melancholy.
I was asked by the leaders of the supplement Lucescu #80 to translate the Romanian coach's career for the Tiktok generation. You are ashamed to write about someone with more trophies than you are, but the bosses do not actually ask you.
So I try
Lucescu is a giant with gray hair. That we are obliged to cherish. Each appearance is absorbed by those who scratched the notebooks with imaginary teams in the hours of technological education and drawing.
With a unique patience and a master tact, he created clubs and especially people, uninterrupted, up to 80 years. And he did not get tired, he returned to Romania after two decades of abroad to qualify us at the World Championship. Probably won't succeed. Less matters.
“The value of the coach is equal to his last result,” sounds a famous quote from Lucescu. Even the coach does not agree with the idea, aware that tens, hundreds, thousands of hours of work are not stamped by a missed or successful shot.
Would it be fair to consider Lucescu a weak coach if we finish 3 in the preliminaries, and would Wales crush us at the dam? It would be a blasphemy.
How good that Mircea Lucescu is criticized in 2025!
In fact, the titanium of the Romanian technicians led Dinamo, Rapid, Inter, Galatasara, chess. He won 36 trophies, with 3 less than Pep Guardiola. The record is permanently placed in history, as did the numbers that he checked as a footballer, in Dinamo, Corvin, at the Romanian national.
But a successful content is consumed today in maximum 10 seconds, the gross statistics does not traffic, and the text must be alerted.
No one is perfect, especially legends
Today, Lucescu is judged by many, almost all and on various criteria. Caricaturized in the sketches, ironicized that he attacks the referees, pointed with his finger for how he humiliated the duck after a failure with Barcelona. And suspected he had staged matches arranged. Or that he made gold boots.
Topics, many real, other exaggerated, few invented, who catch at the kids of 2025, because they do not see in Lucescu an indestructible statueas in Hagi's case. Perhaps superficial, but the microbiologists who grew up with Bănel Nicoliță and Gabi Torje broadcast by GSP TV, not with Răducioiu and Ilie Dumitrescu told by Țopescu, objectively appreciates the great personalities of football, with pluses and minuses in the balance sheets. While the seniors tend to be inflicted by the complex of nostalgia.
Mircea Lucescu caught him 2025 training. He is certainly annoyed by the wicked posts, young and uninitiated journalists, but he also has the satisfaction that he is influential in the digital age, he also reaches the great-grandchildren with him.
At 80, on Tuesday, Lucescu is not anacronic. He was careful to reinvent himself constantly, tactically and behaviorally. Naturally, the tabloidization of football did not bypass, received its portion of hate. But talent and legend somehow do and reach the popular sport, and in the reels on Instagram. It is the absolute proof that the environment and the context are only forms, everything that matters at the end of the age is the value, offline or online.
Maybe the young people do not love Lucescu as the Dynamo supporters born in '60, '70 are doing. It criticizes him. They have reasons, sometimes justice. That's fine, because I follow him. And he learns that a great career means to dedicate your life to a passion. That success is not counted in the likes of a viral, but in the test of time.
That you fulfill their dreams being addicted to them – Lucescu was so obsessed with football that he did not accept that the hinges from the doors not be sufficient, to creak and disturb his team. Ovidiu Ioanițoaia told that not even an intervention on the heart did not stop to prepare in the hospital, behind the doctors, a trivial match with Metalist Kharkov from the Ukraine Championship.
One lesson is that our heroes were at least once bastard.
Mircea Lucescu turns 80 years old / photo: Imago Images
To the end
Gen Z has a habit of plunging into the scandal and today. While the achievements of Mircea Lucescu are not perishable, nor his parables. Nor his flaws. From here and the conflict that does well to everyone. Two opposite worlds collide and learn from each other.
Yes, Lucescu is a universe in itself. Born in the slums of Bucharest, he crossed the times of “comrades” and “cool speeches” continuing to be relevant. And will not withdraw because he tired. Not until it will share everything that has been in life.
