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The soccer book is oddly uninspiring, yet strangely captivating. Even title is confusing. Dear England already is used by a successful theatrical production, an future TV show, and a national address authored by Gareth Southgate in 2021.

This version of Dear England isn’t officially tied to any of those. It represents an oddity in the Dear England Multiverse, a volume about management: a classically dry elite football manager theme that Southgate sticks to persistently, relying on the words “leader”, “leading” or “management” no fewer than 500 times across the book’s entirety.

Questions Raised

“Who are the leaders? What do leaders do? What knowledge do leaders possess?” he asks at the outset, outlining his argument, but choosing not to address “Why are leaders?”, questions likely saved for a future volume.

Beyond that, this publication contains a book-shaped hole throughout. It’s an exercise in subtly confrontational self-defense, in nearly but not entirely saying the underlying truth, jumping adeptly from unresolved issue to raw emotion across a assortment of data visualizations, corporate platitudes and digressions about historical figures.

Reading Experience

Engaging with the text is like listening to your loved ones having a mannered but deeply felt debate in the adjacent space while you’re trying to pay attention on a corporate presentation called “112 Reasons Why Naturally I Had the Last Laugh”. But it is also challenging to put down, as Southgate keeps drifting near to an issue you actually want to hear about, before suddenly changing tack.

Revelations

Readers will find typically controversial revelations in books in this genre, such is the intense fascination with leading the national team. The most notable instances encompass: the manager made up his mind he was absolutely going to resign as England manager after supporters tossed cups at him at the tournament; he came very close to abandoning the game at the interval against the Bulgarian team in 2019 after his players were targeted with slurs; he pioneered the approach of set-piece coaches and everyone in the top division is now following his lead; he has now misplaced his passion for soccer, a startling admission casually mentioned in a short passage at the conclusion.

Managing England through a era of anger, optimism, upheaval and pandemic restrictions was a brutal ordeal. The bruises are obviously still raw.

Predictable Elements

Otherwise, the content is flooded with an robotic linguistic mush of commonplace leadership chat. Advanced copies of this publication were provided with critics under secrecy pacts prior to publication, probably out of apprehension someone might reveal that “difficult conversations can, by their very essence, be challenging”, that you should always look before you leap, that management happens where transformation intersects with empathy.

Sincere Expression

Readers will find nevertheless authentic emotion here. Guiding England through a era of anger, aspiration, upheaval and lockdown was a brutal journey. The scars are clearly still unhealed, even if expressed in a terminology-heavy reimagining of the classic coach story: demonstrating my accuracy about each issue from the start.

Specific Examples

The book’s initial chapter, Trojan-horsed as exciting recollections of the championship match of the tournament, is entirely focused on how good the manager really was at substitutes (the big Southgate gripe revolving around he wasn’t good at substitutes). Subsequently, he explores significant detail about how he oversaw the Euros final of 2021 flawlessly – particularly the unsuccessful penalty shootout – because he followed a set protocol, which suggests that introducing inexperienced squad members at the last moment to take the biggest shot of their lives was sensible and right.

This was confirmed by a winning tiebreaker against the Swiss team at a later tournament after a game where England spent 120 minutes looking as if they were striving to wear a pullover the inside out. “The control we exerted in that shootout was truly exhilarating,” Southgate states, while likening the performance to elite military units killing a high-profile target. Goodness.

Withheld Details

On the occasions we approach to a revelation, the manager retreats from identifying individuals or giving us the substance. We discover there were difficult England players who demanded more focus, possibly because they were pampered at the start of their professional journeys. But as you expect expectantly, the author is already veering off into a topic called a leadership concept, which states that rather than a collection of qualities or principles, team environment is in fact an element that is created by, alas, please, no more.

Highlights

Included in the better parts are when the author writes about the piecemeal method of fostering resilience in young people, or how he attempted to describe national identity more clearly and more positively than anyone else in the limelight. Best of all, there is a truly compelling narrative of that distressing night in the Bulgarian capital where England’s black players were targeted with hatred (and afterwards supported vigorously by their manager).

Heartfelt Conclusion

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