He claims his fatal illness was kept a closely guarded secret. The former coach of the Romanian national team passed away on Tuesday evening. He had been hospitalized for ten days prior, spending the last three in the Intensive Care Unit. Although the news of his death came as a bolt from the blue for many sports fans, Radu Naum explained live on the show Fotbal Club on Digi Sport that the death did not occur suddenly. According to Naum, Mircea Lucescu had been facing serious health issues since the beginning of the year, long before the playoff between Turkey and Romania. The journalist revealed that the coach was diagnosed with leukemia, a severe form of blood cancer, as early as January. "Mircea Lucescu did not die suddenly, from what we know. He had a diagnosis. At some point, we will have to tell the truth. We all know what diagnosis he had. We know that he was diagnosed with a form of leukemia in January," stated Radu Naum. What shocked the public the most was the enormous effort made to conceal the true health condition of the famous coach from the public eye. Naum emphasized that the truth was hidden on a large scale, with the complicity of the media and the tacit consent of Lucescu himself. "The illness was constantly hidden, even from the media. I think at some point it is worth opening a discussion about this, if we want to be honest. If we want to remain only in this brilliant zone and never address the shadows among us, those shadows could repeat. It was an incredible operation to conceal his extremely serious condition, and with his consent, that must be said," added the journalist. Incidentally, Lucescu was buried today at the Bellu Cemetery in Bucharest. According to his explicit wish, only family and the closest friends of the legendary coach attended the final farewell.