Former Ajax manager and Dutch legend Frank De Boer has admitted that he turned down the chance to manage Liverpool in 2012. Talking to The Daily Mail, De Boer opened up about his personal life, his experience as a player and as a manager and revealed that the offer came too soon in his career and he is now looking to try different challenges in his managerial career.

Frank won 4 consecutive league titles with Ajax, from 2010-14 and made history in Netherlands. His accolades as a player and manager are unbelievable and it is only surprising that he did not want to leave Ajax back then when the offer came from the Reds. However, he did leave Netherlands to try his skills in Italy, when he took over as Inter boss, only for the reign to come to an end after just 85 days.

Talking to The Daily Mail, Boer said:

“Leaving Ajax after 25 years as player, coach and manager was hard, but sometimes you are saying the same things, you need a new challenge, like Pep. But at Inter I had to deal with so many things away from football, you lose energy. Every time you thought, ‘Finally, a good result, everything has calmed down’, then comes Mauro Icardi’s book (in which the captain criticised the club’s Ultras) or Marcelo Brozovic is in the discotheque and you have to punish him. We only had three months but honestly, it felt like a year”

When asked by a Rangers fan if he would manage Rangers, where Frank, along with his brother, played for few years, he said,

“I would love to manage here, but the project has to be right. I told Liverpool I was honoured but I was only one year in at Ajax, it was too soon. I needed to achieve more, and I did.”

De Boer – capped 112 times by his country – did not leave Ajax until he was 28. He had won five Dutch titles and the Champions League before joining Barcelona in a £22million deal which also included his brother, Ronald. The brothers lifted the Champions League trophy together in 1995.

Looking at how Frank De Boer has done in his managerial career so far, it appears as though he would have been influential had he taken over at Anfield. Brendan Rodgers did commendably well and took the team close to a league title in many years, only for a Steven Gerrard slip to cost the team a rare title win. It is possible that Frank De Boer might have done a good job as well.

Nevertheless, Liverpool are now on the right path under current boss Jurgen Klopp and will be hoping that they don’t regret missing out on the Dutch legend.