The KNVB announced on Wednesday evening that Frank de Boer will be the successor of Ronald Koeman as national coach of the Dutch national team. The fifty-year-old coach has signed a contract up to and including the World Cup in Qatar, which will be played in the autumn of 2022. Ronald de Boer is proud of his brother and would have liked to be part of his staff at Orange, but believes that the KNVB ‘cannot do this’.

De Boer adds FOX Sports that the contact between his twin brother and the KNVB came about two weeks ago. Presenter Jan Joost van Gangelen asks whether the analyst soon realized that both parties would come out. “You don’t know, because I think they wanted to start the conversation first. In the end they decided to work with him. I think in the beginning you don’t have one fixed choice, but you look around you. They probably think that Frank is the right candidate. ”

“I am certainly proud, let that be clear. This is the highest achievable, an honorary job. I’m going to enjoy it, but it will also be nail biting. When he’s in charge, it is difficult for me. You hope he is doing well, ”De Boer continues. He is then asked to what extent he has been a ‘sounding board’ for his twin brother in recent times. “Of course you talk about certain things that I keep to myself. We talked about aspects that he can encounter. ”

Van Gangelen wonders whether De Boer would have wanted a place on his brother’s staff at Orange. “I have a contract with FOX. No, of course it had been a dream. I personally think that the KNVB cannot make it. The KNVB is the training center for coaches and I have no papers. Of course you can find a role that I can fill in in a way that is good for the Dutch national team. But you are a training center like KNVB, so there must be trainers who have their papers. ”

As it looks now, the staff that Koeman had with Orange remains intact. This means that De Boer will collaborate with Dwight Lodeweges, Patrick Lodewijks and Maarten Stekelenburg. “What I have been given is exactly that”, De Boer responds. The national team offers his brother an opportunity to revive his coaching career. With four national titles with Ajax, his career as a coach got off to a flying start, but periods abroad at the Italian Internazionale, the English Crystal Palace and the American Atlanta United subsequently came to a premature end. Since his departure from the latter club in July of this year, De Boer has been out of work.

“Of course, he hasn’t had an easy period,” agrees De Boer. “Atlanta was fair to good, if you look at how he performed there. But the months at Internazionale and Crystal Palace are not the best moments in the coaching profession and he wants to show that he is still the coach he was at Ajax, that he still got it. ”