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This soccer publication is oddly tedious, yet strangely captivating. Its title causes confusion. Dear England already names a successful theatrical production, an future TV show, and a public letter written by the manager in 2021.

This iteration of Dear England isn’t formally connected to any of those. It represents an peculiar entry in the expanding Dear England universe, a volume about guidance: a typically dry top-level coach subject that the author sticks to relentlessly, employing the words “leadership”, “leading” or “management” at least 500 times across 336 pages.

Inquiries Raised

“What are leaders? What actions do leaders take? What knowledge do leaders possess?” Southgate inquires in the opening, setting out his stall, but choosing not to ask “How are leaders?”, topics probably saved for a follow-up publication.

Beyond that, this book has a notable absence throughout. It’s an attempt in indirectly hostile self-defense, in almost-but-not-quite stating the underlying truth, hopping adeptly from unsettled score to unscabbed wound across a collection of data visualizations, corporate platitudes and digressions about historical figures.

Engagement

Reading it is like overhearing your family members having a mannered but deeply felt argument in the next room while you’re striving to concentrate on a corporate presentation titled “Countless Explanations for My Eventual Success”. But it is also impossible to disengage, as the author keeps coming close to a topic you genuinely desire to hear about, before unexpectedly changing tack.

Disclosures

The book contains always attention-grabbing disclosures in books like these, such is the intense obsession with England managerdom. The best ones include: the manager made up his mind he was definitely going to step down as England manager after spectators tossed beer glasses at him at the tournament; he almost chose to abandoning the game at the interval against Bulgaria in 2019 after his players were targeted with slurs; he invented the idea of dedicated restart experts and everyone in the top division is now following his lead; he has now abandoned his love for football, a startling confession casually mentioned in a brief section at the end.

Managing England through a time of rage, aspiration, upheaval and confinement was a brutal ordeal. The bruises are obviously still raw.

Predictable Elements

Throughout much of the book, the text is flooded with an computer-generated linguistic mush of standard leadership chat. Advanced copies of this book were distributed with journalists under confidentiality clauses ahead of release, likely out of apprehension someone might reveal that “difficult conversations can, by their very essence, be challenging”, that you should always think before you act, that leadership takes place where evolution intersects with empathy.

Sincere Expression

Readers will find however real sentiment here. Guiding England through a time of fury, hope, political ferment and pandemic restrictions was a brutal experience. The wounds are clearly still unhealed, even if expressed in a jargon-laden reinterpretation of the standard leader narrative: demonstrating my accuracy about each issue throughout.

Detailed Instances

The publication’s opening passage, disguised as exciting accounts of the championship match of the tournament, is all about how successful the manager really was at substitutes (the big common complaint centering on he was not effective at altering the lineup). Later, he explores significant detail about how he managed the deciding game of 2021 perfectly – specifically the failed spot-kick decider – because he complied with a predetermined process, which must mean that bringing on inexperienced squad members in the closing stages to take the biggest attempt of their careers was sensible and correct.

This was confirmed by a victorious penalty decider against Switzerland in a subsequent competition after a game where England spent 120 minutes looking as if they were attempting to put on a jumper the backwards. “Our dominance in that tiebreaker was absolutely exciting,” Southgate writes, while equating the showing to elite military units eliminating a high-profile target. Goodness.

Avoided Revelations

On the occasions we do get close to a revelation, the manager backs away from naming names or providing the details. We learn there were difficult England squad members who required more focus, possibly because they were spoilt early in their time in football. But as you expect hopefully, he is already shifting into something titled The Culture Code, which states that rather than a collection of attributes or principles, culture is in fact an element that is developed by, unfortunately, please, no more.

Highlights

Included in the stronger bits are when he explores about the gradual process of developing resilience in youth, or how he tried to define national identity more coherently and more helpfully than any public personality in the spotlight. Best of all, there is a really compelling description of that harrowing match in the Bulgarian capital where England’s black players were viciously abused (and subsequently defended forcefully by their leader).

Sincere Finale

Perhaps the most emotional segment {comes|arrives|appears