RRI Sports Club

The Romanian football school has produced coaches who lead important teams and win the biggest European competitions.

Florin Orban, 14.08.2025, 13:45

He was one of the best Romanian footballers of the 1960s and 1970s. After that, he became a coach and led top-ranking teams, at club level, or national squads. His name is Mircea Lucescu and, in terms of number of trophies won during his coaching career, 35 in total, he is the third in the world. Only the man who made history as a manager at Manchester United, Alex Ferguson, with 49 trophies, and Pep Guardiola, the current manager of Manchester City, with 39, are ahead of Lucescu.

Mircea Lucescu has just turned 80. Born on July 29, 1945, in Bucharest, he started playing football at the Sports School No. 2 in the Romanian capital, then he was accepted into the junior groups of the club Dinamo. As a senior, he only played for three teams: Dinamo, Sportul Studenţesc and Corvinul Hunedoara.

He made his debut as a  coach in 1979 at Corvinul Hunedoara, a team where he also played for three years. During his career, he coached the Corvinul Hunedoara, Dinamo Bucharest, the Italian teams Pisa, Brescia and Reggiana, after which he returned to Romania, to Rapid Bucharest. He then went to Inter Milan, the Turkish teams Galatasaray and Beşiktaş in Istanbul and then to Ukraine, to Şahtior Donetsk, made a stopover in Russia, to Zenit Saint Petersburg, then to Dinamo Kyiv. Between these club teams, he led the national teams of Romania and Turkey.

Mircea Lucescu’s track record includes a European Super Cup with Galatasaray, a UEFA Cup with Shakhtar Donetsk, 9 Ukrainian championship titles, 8 with Shakhtar Donetsk and one with Dinamo Kyiv. He also has two Romanian championship titles, one with Dinamo and one with Rapid. He also won two championships in Turkey – one with Galatasaray and one with Beşiktaş. He also has a Russian Super Cup with Zenit. In Ukraine, he won 7 Cups, 6 with Shakhtar Donetsk and one with Dinamo Kyiv, and 8 Super Cups, 7 with the Donetsk team and one with Kyiv. In Romania, he also won two Cups with Dinamo and one with Rapid, a team with which he also won a Super Cup.

Since August 6, 2024, he has been the head coach of the Romanian national team after a 38-year hiatus. In his first term, which lasted from November 1, 1981 to October 2, 1986, Romania played 58 matches, and its record included 24 wins, 15 losses, 19 draws, and a qualification for the 1984 European Championship. (EE)