He is known as one of the coaches who won the most trophies: Who is Mircea Lucescu?

Mircea Lucescu was born on July 29, 1945. Born in Bucharest, the Romanian coach is a former football player. He is remembered as one of the coaches who won the most trophies. He won the Romanian League championship 7 times with Dinamo Bucharest. Lucescu, who won the UEFA Super Cup with Galatasaray, won the UEFA Cup with Shakhtar Donetsk.

Lucescu was named Coach of the Year in Romania in 2004, 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2021, and Coach of the Year in Ukraine between 2006 and 2008 and 2014.

In 2015, he became the fifth person to coach 100 UEFA Champions League matches, along with successful names such as Alex Ferguson, Carlo Ancelotti, Arsène Wenger, and José Mourinho. He ranks second after Ferguson in terms of the number of official trophies won.

Mircea Lucescu (born 29 July 1945) is a Romanian professional football manager and former player. He is one of the most decorated managers of all time. Lucescu is also one of the most successful players of the Romanian league championship, having won all seven of his titles with Dinamo București. Apart from the latter club, he had spells at Știința București and Corvinul Hunedoara, and made 70 appearances for the Romania national team, which he captained in the 1970 FIFA World Cup.

Who is Mircea Lucescu?

Mircea Lucescu was born in Bucharest in 1945. After playing for Dinamo Bucharest and Corvinul, he started working as a player-coach at Corvinul in 1978.

Football era

Lucescu started playing football in the youth team of Sportiva Bukarest in 1961. After 2 years, he transferred to the infrastructure of the Dinamo Bucharest team. He played for the A team for the first time in the match where they defeated Rapid Bucharest 5-2 on their home field on 21 June 1964.

In 1965, Lucescu was loaned to Ştiinta Bucharest, one of the Romanian second league teams, to gain experience. The club finished second in Liga II in the 1965–66 season, their second biggest success in that league. The next season, the team was named Politehnica Bucharest and finished 5th in the league. Lucescu played in 39 matches in these two seasons and scored 12 goals.

With the 1967-68 season, Lucescu returned to his long-term Dinamo Bucharest years.

Lucescu, who played for Dinamo Bucharest until 1977, won 4 league championships during this period. Features He showed his highest goal performance in the 1972-73 season with 12 goals in 28 matches.

He also played in the Champion Clubs' Cup, UEFA Cup, and Fair Cities Cup organizations. He scored 2 goals in the Champion Clubs' Cup, one against Atlético Madrid and one against Real Madrid.

In 1977 he was transferred to Corvinul Hunedoara. Lucescu, who continued his football life in a smaller club after a very successful team like Dinamo Bucharest, became one of the most important names of the team. They were relegated in the 1978-79 season. They returned in the 1979-80 season by finishing first in Liga II.

Lucescu contributed to the team's third place in the league in the 1981-82 season by scoring 2 goals in 23 matches. Lucescu retired from football at the end of the season.

National team career

In his second season on loan at Ştiinta Bucharest, Lucescu was called up to the Romanian National Football Team. He became a national player by playing in the first 11 and 90 minutes in the EURO 1968 qualifying match against Switzerland on 2 November 1966.

On 3 December 1966, he scored his first goal in the EURO 1968 qualifying match played away against Southern Cyprus, which was his 4th national match. He became the national team captain for the first time in the friendly match against England on 15 January 1969.

Technical directorship

Mircea Lucescu was born in Bucharest in 1945. After playing for Dinamo Bucharest and Corvinul, he started working as a player-coach at Corvinul in 1978.

He became the coach of the Romanian National Team in 1981. He made history as the coach who made Hagi play for the first time in the national team, where he worked for five years, and took Romania to the 1984 European Championship finals.

He worked for Dinamo Bucharest for four years from 1986 and made the team semi-finalists in the Cup Winners' Cup in 1990. He ran Pizza, Brescia, and Regiana in Italy between 1990 and 1996.

At the end of 1998, he coached Inter for six months and then returned to Dinamo Bucharest. Lucescu, who signed a contract with Galatasaray on June 26, 2000, had a lot of trouble after a coach like Terim at that time. While many players from Terim's squad signed with different clubs in Europe, Lucescu had to create a new squad.

The coach, who was always compared to Fatih Terim in the first season, attracted attention with his calm stance. And despite its many shortcomings, Galatasaray succeeded in reaching the quarter-finals of the Champions League for the first time but was unluckily eliminated by Real Madrid in the quarter-finals.

BEŞİKTAŞ YEARS (2002-2004)

After he was transferred to Beşiktaş in 2002, he led the team, which led in the 12th week, until the end of the season. This season, Beşiktaş was defeated in only one match. At the same time, Beşiktaş achieved the greatest success in its history by reaching the quarter-finals of the UEFA Cup.

Türkiye national football team

In the summer of 2017, Lucescu's name began to be mentioned with Turkish clubs again. At the beginning of August, he was offered the post of football director by Dursun Özbek, the president of his former team Galatasaray.

A day later, he received an offer from TFF president Yıldırım Demirören to be the coach of the Turkish National Football Team, and Lucescu accepted this offer and signed a 2+1-year contract with the Turkish national team.

In the inaugural season of the UEFA Nations League, Turkey were relegated to League C in November 2018. The following February, his contract was terminated by mutual consent.

Dynamo Kyiv

On 23 July 2020, Lucescu returned to Ukraine after signing a two-year contract with the main rival of his former club Shakhtar Donetsk, Dynamo Kyiv. His spell started in a controversial way, as he attempted to resign from his position after only a couple of days.

Lucescu was living in Kyiv in February 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine. He initially wanted to stay put, but fled to his homeland on the advice of the Romanian embassy, as a way to help Dynamo's foreign players get to safety.

On 3 November 2023, Lucescu announced that he would step down as the manager of Dynamo Kyiv after a 0-1 defeat against their rivals Shakhtar Donetsk.