Razvan Lucescu said in an interview with Foxbet. The Romanian coach expressed his regret because, as he admits, this was the first time he had become so attached to a team. At the same time, he spoke of the team’s excessive expectations, once again took a dig at… Athens, and discussed how his final season with the “Double-Headed Eagle of the North” went awry. He spoke in detail about:

The way he parted ways with PAOK and how it left a bitter taste: “What psychologists say is that you have to manage to avoid the noise. Because that noise is very toxic. And in those moments—because there are moments of tension, when things aren’t very clear from the start—it’s just a matter of time; it’s a phase, and then things get bigger and bigger until we reach a point we don’t like. For example, it’s better not to talk. It’s over. The club has the right to make changes, and that’s absolutely the right thing to do. It’s time for a change. You need someone else to work with, to learn from a different kind of experience. So it’s absolutely the right thing to do. The only thing I wish is that I could have said goodbye to the PAOK fans in a different way. I have to thank Mr. Savvidis for this great seven-year period we spent together, filled with incredible emotions. I’m grateful to him.”

On the timing of his departure from PAOK: “I don’t know if it was the right time. I’m speaking with sadness because I love PAOK. At some point, I started to love PAOK tremendously. I considered myself a part of it. Even though nothing like this has ever happened to me before in my life. I imagine it’s like a beautiful marriage, and at some point something… breaks, and the separation comes. I suppose that, among other emotions, there’s also this feeling of sadness—about the situation that arose.”

On the lost Cup final and the team’s performance in the playoffs: “What do you think? That I wasn’t motivated to fight for the Cup? The way the Cup ended is unbelievable to me. But in a way, it’s a consequence of what was happening earlier. After that Cup final, if you’re a normal person and a professional soccer player, you analyze the last four games—what were those games like? Two games against Olympiacos, one against AEK, and one against Panathinaikos. After what happened to us last season, another team would have fallen apart—they would have given up. And we have an example right here. And so, even though we weren’t at our best, we managed to beat Olympiacos once, draw with Panathinaikos, and draw with AEK at Toumba. We could have won. It wasn’t easy. Those results in derbies weren’t results to be dismissed. The problem was that people interpreted these results by overanalyzing them, or by focusing on the outcome of the Cup final, or by clinging to the hopes created by a team that playedattacking soccer up until a certain point. And that’s what led to this sense of disappointment.”

On the season in review: “We also had a very crazy season. A very, very crazy season. But I don’t want to get into that. I don’t want to comment on Mr. Savvidis. I’m commenting on how I see the situation. If you create huge expectations, the risk is very high. I’m going to say things that aren’t very pleasant for a lot of people, but that’s the reality. We can’t just brush this situation aside. PAOK is a team that, over the past 100 years, has won eight cups—so it’s not a team with a winning culture. There are many reasons and stories behind why it didn’t win. A vast, significant, and complex reality has suffered under injustice. We are all too familiar with the sporting rivalry between Thessaloniki and Athens, which more often than not results in hardship. The stolen title. And this is one of the key pieces of evidence of what PAOK has endured in the past when facing teams from Athens.”

*photo source: KYPE