Lucescu: 'Fonseca used my ideas'

The 74-year-old Romanian legend was on the Shakhtar bench from 2004-16, when he was replaced by Fonseca.

“At Shakhtar, he made the most of my work. Now the tough job is to prove his own capabilities and create his own ideas at Roma. He has to create a winning system. He is young and has everything it takes to achieve that, but he mustn’t be evaluated for what he did at Shakhtar, because that was building on my team that was already disciplined and knew what to do. When he started out, he tried to play in a different way, but the President intervened and told him to play the way I had done before. And it worked. Therefore, Fonseca made the most of my work. At Roma on the other hand, he must put his ideas into practice from scratch”.