(CNN) Football coach and former player Frank de Boer has been criticized for calling equal pay at international level a "ridiculous" idea.

De Boer, who played over 100 times for the Netherlands in the 1990s and early 2000s, took charge of Atlanta United last year after the side had won its first MLS Cup under Tata Martino.

"It's the same like tennis," De Boer said in an interview with The Guardian . "If there are watching, for the World Cup final, 500 million people or something like that, and 100 million for a women's final, that's a difference. So it's not the same.

"And of course they have to be paid what they deserve ... and not less, just what they really deserve. If it's just as popular as the men, they will get it, because the income and the advertising will go into that.

"But it's not like that, so why do they have to earn the same? I think it's ridiculous. I don't understand that."