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The soccer book is strangely dull, yet oddly compelling. Its title raises questions. The Dear England title currently belongs to a hit theatrical production, an forthcoming TV show, and a open letter penned by Gareth Southgate in 2021.

This version of Dear England isn’t formally tied to any of those. It exists as an anomaly in the Dear England Multiverse, a volume about leadership: a traditionally dry top-level coach trope that the author follows relentlessly, relying on the words “leader”, “leading” or “management” at least 500 times across 336 pages.

Inquiries Posed

“What defines a leader? What actions do leaders take? And what do leaders know?” Southgate inquires at the outset, setting out his argument, but declining to explore “Why are leaders?”, themes presumably reserved for a second book.

Beyond that, this book has a book-shaped hole in the middle. It’s a venture in indirectly hostile self-justification, in coming close without actually stating the actual thing, hopping nimbly from unsettled score to unscabbed wound across a collection of graphs, corporate platitudes and digressions about 16th-century statesmen.

Immersion

Going through the book is like listening to your loved ones having a controlled but deeply felt disagreement in the adjacent space while you’re attempting to pay attention on a corporate presentation called “Countless Explanations for My Eventual Success”. But it is also impossible to disengage, as Southgate keeps drifting near to something you genuinely desire to hear about, before abruptly shifting focus.

Insights

The book contains inevitably controversial revelations in publications like these, such is the intense obsession with the role of England manager. The most notable ones encompass: he made up his mind he was certainly going to quit as England manager after fans hurled containers at him at the tournament; he almost chose to abandoning the game at the interval against the Bulgarian team in 2019 after his squad members were subjected to racism; he introduced the concept of dedicated restart experts and the entire league in the English football is now copying him; he has now abandoned his love for football, a shocking confession briefly included in a brief section at the conclusion.

Managing England through a period of anger, hope, turmoil and confinement was a grueling experience. The wounds are obviously still raw.

Predictable Elements

Throughout much of the book, the content is saturated with an AI-style verbal clutter of commonplace guidance discourse. Copies of this book were provided with reviewers under confidentiality clauses prior to launch, probably out of fear someone might reveal that “tough talks can, by their nature, be challenging”, that you should always think before you act, that guidance happens where transformation meets empathy.

Emotional Core

Readers will find however genuine feeling here. Leading England through a period of fury, hope, upheaval and pandemic restrictions was a grueling ordeal. The bruises are clearly still fresh, even if expressed in a buzzword-filled reimagining of the standard leader narrative: demonstrating my accuracy about each issue from the start.

Notable Cases

The publication’s initial chapter, Trojan-horsed as gripping memories of the final of the tournament, is completely dedicated to how successful the manager actually was at substitutes (the major criticism of Southgate centering on he was not effective at substitutes). Later, he explores significant detail about how he oversaw the championship match of 2021 impeccably – notably the unsuccessful penalty shootout – because he followed a set protocol, which suggests that throwing on young players in the closing stages to take the crucial shot of their lives was reasonable and correct.

That approach was validated by a winning tiebreaker against the Swiss team in a subsequent competition after a match where England spent the full duration looking as if they were striving to wear a pullover the backwards. “Our dominance in that penalty decider was simply thrilling,” Southgate writes, while likening the display to US Navy Seals neutralizing a high-profile target. Dear me.

Avoided Revelations

When we do get close to a revelation, he withdraws from naming names or providing the details. We learn there were challenging England players who required more attention, maybe because they were indulged at the start of their careers. But as you anticipate eagerly, he is already shifting into a topic titled a specific management theory, which asserts that as opposed to a grouping of qualities or principles, culture is in fact a phenomenon that is formed by, alas, stop, we’ve heard enough.

Notable Sections

Within the better bits are when he discusses about the incremental nature of building resilience in the next generation, or how he attempted to define national identity more clearly and more constructively than anyone else in the limelight. Best of all, there is a genuinely compelling account of that traumatic night in the Bulgarian capital where England’s players of color were viciously abused (and afterwards protected vigorously by their leader).

Genuine Ending

Possibly the most sincere section {comes|arrives|appears