Nery Castillo brought up an old grudge with Mircea Lucescu just hours before the Romanian coach passed away in a Bucharest hospital at the age of 80. Lucescu had been transferred to the hospital after fainting in a Romania training session on April 2 and from which he could not recover.
Hours before Lucescu passed away, Nery Castillo published a controversial story on his official Instagram account, bringing up an old personal quarrel that the former player had with his coach at Shakhtar Donetsk between 2007 and 2009 and which subsequently marked him throughout his sporting career.
“I am happy that your son went to see you in these difficult moments that you are going through and that he is by your side. You did not let me be by my mother’s side when she was in a coma nor did you let me say goodbye to her at her funeral. I wish you to recover and be with your family well,” Castillo wrote on his social network accompanied with an emoji with hands together simulating a prayer.
The sad thing about this story is that Lucescu‘s death came just hours after the story became public. This reality between the two was not unknown and Castillo always brought it up whenever he could, as he was left with the pain of not being able to be with him in his last moments.
In different interviews over the years, Nery referred to this event that still causes him pain. “My father called me from Uruguay and told me that my mother had fallen into a coma. At that time I was in Greece, I went straight to Uruguay the same day, December 29. I had to be back in Ukraine on January 7 to resume training with Shakhtar,” Castillo explained.
Before returning to Europe, the former player tried to convince Lucescu to give him more days to be with his family: “I called the coach and said: ‘My mother is dying, let me stay a little longer in Uruguay’. He refused. My father tells me; ‘Go, nothing changes, she is in a coma‘. I go to Greece to pack my things and then I travel to Ukraine. When I was going to training, the phone rings and my father tells me that my mother had died. It was January 8, 2009.”
Castillo adds even more pain with his words when he recalls those moments. “I asked Lucescu for permission to go to Uruguay for the funeral. He didn’t let me. I didn’t see my mother in her last moments or at the funeral. These are things that people don’t know. I didn’t see my mother die, I didn’t even go to the funeral,” he said, expanding with details of the ‘grudge‘ he had with the Romanian coach.
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