Dutch legend Frank de Boer says he was “honoured” to be contacted about the vacant Liverpool manager’s job in 2012 – but it was “too soon” for him to move to the Premier League.
The former Barcelona defender was only 18 months into his reign at Ajax when the Reds were seeking a replacement for Kenny Daglish.
Liverpool ended up appointing Brendan Rodgers but De Boer, who parted company with Inter Milan back in November, is now eyeing a job in England.
“I would love to manage here, but the project has to be right,” De Boer told the Daily Mail.
“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 won four successive league titles with Ajax but lasted less than three months after taking over at Inter Milan.
“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,” De Boer added.
“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 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.”
