Cornel Dinu (77 years old) was absent on Friday from the funeral of Mircea Lucescu (80 years old), who was first his colleague at Dinamo and the national team, then a rival as a coach in the Dinamo – Rapid derbies, pigmented duels with harsh statements from both sides, and in the end they decided to bury the hatchet and normalize their relations.
The “prosecutor”, as Cornel Dinu is nicknamed, didn’t even go to the catafalque on Wednesday and Thursday, when all the people could say goodbye to Mircea Lucescu at the “National Arena”. Also, on Friday, he was neither at the service to be officiated at the Church of Saint Eleftherie, nor at the Bellu Cemetery, where “Il Luce” sleeps his eternal sleep.
It was not a lack of compassion on the part of the former colleague. It is known in the world of football that Dinu detests funerals and that he was not present at any such moment in which former colleagues of his generation were involved. He wants to stay with their memory from the time they lived.
A friend of his reveals that Dinu did not go to the Bellu Cemetery when his wife was led on her last journey. Silvia Dinu, a former lawyer, died in December 2011, at the age of 63, after having been diagnosed with diabetes 12 years before.
“Dinu was not at the cemetery when he buried his wife either. She only went to the church where she was deposited. He stayed in the chair in the church, he didn’t go to Bellu.
I told him once that, on my way to Bellu, I also lit a candle at his wife’s head and I wanted to send him a picture, but he suddenly cut it off and told me not to talk to him about it. He told me he couldn’t stand it.
Dinu always has a place at Bellu. He will be buried next to his wife, on Artist Alley, next to his older brother, Costică. Since his wife died, I don’t think Dinu ever made it to the cemetery“, reveals a relative.
However, Valentin Ceaușescu, the son of Elena and Nicolae Ceaușescu, came to Lucescu’s commemoration. Throughout his life, “Il Luce” repeatedly accused that the Ceaușescu family blocked his rise in football, while he was a coach at Dinamo, favoring the rival Steaua.
In the Italian press, at the end of last year, Lucescu declared: “I couldn’t win the championship with Dinamo, because his son was at Steaua”.
