HILVERSUM (DA) — Former Curaçao coach Dick Advocaat received encouraging news this week after chemotherapy for his seriously ill daughter began showing positive results, according to remarks aired Friday on Vandaag Inside.
Cor Pot said on Vandaag Inside that Advocaat learned a day earlier that the treatment was working and that the update brought visible relief.
“The latest reports are that things are going reasonably well,” Pot said on Vandaag Inside. “The chemotherapy for his daughter is working. He got that good news yesterday. He was relieved.”
The 78-year-old Advocaat resigned immediately as Curaçao coach last month to focus on his daughter’s condition, stepping away only months after guiding the national team to a historic World Cup qualification in November.
That tournament had shaped up as a possible crowning moment in his long coaching career, but Pot said the family situation changed everything.
“Dick was deeply affected by it,” Pot said on Vandaag Inside. “It has cost him a few years of his life.”
Pot, who also left Curaçao in solidarity with Advocaat, said a return to the national team cannot be ruled out. But he added on Vandaag Inside that no clause was built into Fred Rutten’s contract to address a possible comeback.
Rutten was appointed after Advocaat’s departure and now leads Curaçao into its first World Cup appearance.
Curaçao opens the tournament on June 14 against Germany, then faces Ecuador on June 21 and Ivory Coast on June 25 in the group stage.