Frank de Boer thanked him for a place on the Supervisory Board at Ajax last summer. The former defender was offered to fill the vacant position from Danny Blind, who temporarily left to become Louis van Gaal’s assistant coach at the the Dutch squad. De Boer did not want to hinder the refereeing career of his son-in-law Joey Kooij and did not go into it.
“I could possibly work for the Supervisory Board of Ajax when Danny Blind became Louis’s assistant coach,” says De Boer at the talk show. The kick-off. “I asked the KNVB whether it could possibly be harmful to the career of my son-in-law. In the end, the KNVB said that he probably should not have whistled Ajax matches.” The football association has an unwritten rule that there should be no familial ties between arbitrators and those directly involved in football clubs.
De Boer actually liked the position at Ajax. “There was a good chance that I would have done it, because it was for a certain period of time,” adds the former Ajax success coach. “If Danny comes back after the World Cup, he would just take that position again. So it was temporary. I didn’t do it, so as not to get in the way of Joey’s career.”
It is not the first time that the ties between Kooij and De Boer have been discussed at the KNVB. “When I was coach of Ajax, the discussion was already there once,” said the ex-national coach of the Dutch. “Whether he would be allowed to whistle for Ajax if I was Ajax’s coach. That was not allowed. They didn’t want it at the time. Then it seemed logical to me now.”