Willem van Hanegem fired as coach of FC Utrecht

FC Utrecht fired coach Willem van Hanegem on Tuesday, one day after he criticized the team’s management and said he planned to resign at the end of the season.

“There is no basis for a continuation of our cooperation,” Utrecht chairman Jan Willem van Dop said in a statement.

The 64-year-old Van Hanegem wrote in his column Monday in the Algemeen Dagblad that he intended to resign at the end of the season because Utrecht officials had let him take the criticism for their decision to fire four of his assistants in October.

“I was used as a shield, more of a scapegoat, actually,” wrote Van Hanegem, who supported the firing of the assistants but denied it was his idea. “They let me be besmirched while they knew how it all happened.”

Assistant coach Ton du Chatinier will take temporary charge of Utrecht, which is in ninth place in the Dutch league.

Van Hanegem was a star defender for the Netherlands at the 1974 World Cup, when the team lost to Germany in the final.