Mircea Lucescu

Mircea Lucescu (born July 29, 1945, in Bucharest) is a former Romanian football player and one of the most successful Romanian football managers.


Lucescu played 362 matches and scored 78 goals in Romanian First League. He started his football player career at Dinamo Bucharest, one of Romania's top teams, where he played for 15 years; he played also for Politehnica Bucharest and Corvinul Hunedoara. Lucescu appeared 74 times in Romania's National Team. As a player, he won 7 times the Romanian First League and 1 Romania's Cup, with Dinamo Bucharest.


In Romania, Mircea Lucescu managed Dinamo Bucharest, Corvinul Hunedoara, Rapid Bucharest. After coaching Romanian national team, had a long career in Italy, at Pisa, Brescia, Reggiana, Inter Milan. He had a brilliant start with Galatasaray, winning the European Super Cup against Real Madrid. Under Lucescu's managership, Galatasaray qualified to quarter finals in the UEFA Champions League in the 2000-01 season for the first time, but in the quarter finals they lost to Real Madrid. The same year, he lost the Turkish League title to rivals Fenerbahçe. Next year, Gala qualified to second phase in the UEFA Champions League and won Turkish League title under his managership. (2001-2002 season).


Lucescu was disappointed to be sacked despite winning the league champion title. In June 2002, he signed a contract with rival Beşiktaş J.K.. It was a very important season for Beşiktaş since, in 2003, the reputable Turkish club was celebrating her 100th foundation year. In this atmosphere, Beşiktaş made a great work under Lucescu's management. They won the Turkish title by having only one loss, and collecting 85 points; a record for Turkcell Super League as the maximum points collected in a season. So Beşiktaş was able to succeed by winning the championship in 2003, in their first century fest. In the 2002-03 season, Beşiktaş reached the quarter final of the UEFA Cup, only to lose to Lazio. 2003-04 season started very well for Lucescu and Beşiktaş. The team could not qualify from a difficult Champions League group, but was able to get a ticket to UEFA Cup by holding the 3rd position in the group. In the second half of the season, the team's performance declined drastically. Lucescu could not stop the decline. He blamed Turkish Football Federation for one-sided decisions by the referees. After a disastrous second half, Lucescu decided to leave Turkey blaming that his championship was stolen.

He is currently the manager of Shakhtar Donetsk, he won the last 2009 UEFA Cup Final (May 20, 2009) against Werder Bremen 2-1 after extra time. His son, Răzvan Lucescu, is now managing FC Braşov and the Romania national football team.