Former Dutch manager Foppe van de Haan has revealed he once received an offer from Sunderland but wasn’t particularly interested in the proposal.
The 80-year-old has been speaking to FC Update about his career as a manager, which saw him mostly working in the Netherlands with Heerenveen and the Netherlands youth sides.
He led the club back to the Eredivisie in 1993 after being made head coach the previous year and led them to second place in the division in 2000, meaning they qualified for the Champions League for the first time in their history.
He went on to lead the Netherland U21s team, with whom he wont the UEFA European U21 Football Championship in 2006 and 2007 respectively, as well as a quarter-final placing at the 2008 Summer Olympics.
He had small roles after that with Ajax Cape Town and Tuvalu before a brief interim spell at Heerenveen in 2015-16, which with the last of his career.
He’s now looking back on that career and admits he had the opportunity to head to Sunderland at one point but didn’t fancy a switch to the Stadium of Light.
“I once received a call from England via an agent,” he said.
“But that was already during my time with the Dutch Juniors, so I didn’t respond to that either. I think that was the Premier League, it could have been Sunderland. For me it was… that’s never an option, no. I didn’t even have an agent myself.”
