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This football book is oddly dull, yet curiously compelling. Its title is confusing. Dear England already names a successful play, an upcoming television program, and a public letter authored by the manager in 2021.

This version of Dear England isn’t officially related to those. It exists as an oddity in the Dear England Multiverse, a volume about guidance: a typically dull elite football manager trope that the author adheres to persistently, employing the words “leadership”, “guiding” or “management” a minimum of 500 times across 336 pages.

Inquiries Explored

“What are leaders? What do leaders do? What insights do leaders have?” he asks early on, establishing his stall, but choosing not to address “Why are leaders?”, questions likely saved for a second book.

Beyond that, this book contains a notable absence throughout. It’s a venture in passive-aggressive self-defense, in nearly but not entirely expressing the real point, skipping skillfully from unsettled score to raw emotion across a collection of graphs, management jargon and references about 16th-century statesmen.

Engagement

Going through the book is like overhearing your parents having a polite but intensely emotional debate in the nearby area while you’re attempting to pay attention on a professional workshop called “Numerous Justifications for My Ultimate Victory”. But it is also difficult to disengage, as Southgate keeps coming close to an issue you genuinely want to hear about, before abruptly shifting focus.

Revelations

Readers will find inevitably controversial revelations in publications in this genre, explained by the intense fascination with leading the national team. The best ones are: Southgate decided he was certainly going to quit as England manager after spectators tossed beer glasses at him at the Euros; he nearly decided to abandoning the game at half-time against the Bulgarian team in 2019 after his players were targeted with slurs; he pioneered the idea of dedicated restart experts and all teams in the Premier League is now following his lead; he has now misplaced his love for soccer, a surprising admission briefly included in a short passage at the end.

Leading England through a period of anger, aspiration, upheaval and pandemic restrictions was a harsh journey. The scars are obviously still raw.

Commonplace Material

In other sections, the content is flooded with an AI-style verbal clutter of generic guidance discourse. Copies of this book were shared with reviewers under confidentiality clauses prior to publication, likely out of apprehension someone might leak that “tough talks can, by their very essence, be difficult”, that you should always think before you act, that leadership happens where evolution combines with compassion.

Genuine Feeling

The book contains nevertheless real feeling within. Managing England through a period of fury, hope, political ferment and confinement was a brutal ordeal. The bruises are obviously still unhealed, albeit expressed in a jargon-laden reimagining of the standard leader story: how my decisions were correct about all matters throughout.

Specific Examples

The book’s initial chapter, disguised as exciting memories of the final of the European Championship, is all about how successful the manager actually was at substitutes (the major common complaint centering on he was not effective at substitutes). Further on, he explores great depth about how he handled the Euros final of 2021 flawlessly – particularly the failed penalty shootout – because he adhered to a established procedure, which must mean that throwing on young players very late to take the most important attempt of their existence was reasonable and correct.

That approach was validated by a victorious tiebreaker against the Swiss team at a later tournament after a fixture where England spent the full duration looking as if they were attempting to don a sweater the wrong way round. “The control we exerted in that shootout was absolutely exhilarating,” Southgate writes, while comparing the showing to US Navy Seals eliminating Osama bin Laden. Goodness.

Withheld Details

When we do get close to a insight, Southgate withdraws from naming names or providing the substance. We learn there were challenging England individuals who insisted on more attention, perhaps because they were spoilt at the start of their time in football. But as you anticipate expectantly, the author is already veering off into something named a specific management theory, which claims that as opposed to a grouping of qualities or ideals, organizational ethos is in fact something that is created by, unfortunately, stop, we’ve heard enough.

Notable Sections

Among the stronger bits are when he discusses about the piecemeal process of developing resilience in the next generation, or how he sought to define national identity more lucidly and more helpfully than any public personality in the limelight. The standout section, there is a really absorbing narrative of that distressing match in the Bulgarian capital where England’s African heritage squad members were viciously abused (and later supported vigorously by their manager).

Genuine Ending

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