Club Career
De Boer's first club was De Zouaven in Lutjebroek where he played before being selected for the Ajax youth programme in 1983. On the professional club level, Ronald played for Ajax (1988–91 and 1993–98), Twente (1991–93), FC Barcelona (1998–2000), Rangers (2000–04), Al-Rayyan (2004–05) and Al-Shamal (2005–08). In both Qatari clubs, he was reunited again with his brother Frank, his teammate at Ajax, Barcelona and Rangers.
While impressive at Ajax during the early 1990s towards the 1998 FIFA World Cup, his high-profile transfer to Barcelona marked what would be an unlikely bad patch for a prolific goal-scoring midfielder as he managed to feature in only 33 games for the club and only scored one goal overall. In the 2000–01 season, he opted to join the Dutch legion at Rangers under the manager Dick Advocaat. Among the Dutch internationals who at that time played for the Rangers were Arthur Numan, Bert Konterman, Fernando Ricksen and Giovanni van Bronckhorst. He spent four seasons with the club before joining Al-Rayyan after the 2003–04 season.
De Boer recovered from surgery on a neck injury and decided not to play in Al-Shamal's last two games of the 2006–07 season. On 19 March 2008, de Boer canceled his contract with Qatar outfit Al-Shamal and retired.
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