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The football book is curiously uninspiring, yet strangely captivating. Its title is confusing. Dear England already names a hit theatrical production, an forthcoming television program, and a open letter penned by the manager in 2021.

This iteration of Dear England is not formally connected to those. It exists as an anomaly in the expanding Dear England universe, a volume about leadership: a traditionally dry elite football manager trope that Southgate follows doggedly, relying on the words “leader”, “guiding” or “management” a minimum of 500 times across the book’s entirety.

Themes Posed

“Who are the leaders? What actions do leaders take? What insights do leaders have?” he asks early on, setting out his position, but stopping short to address “When are leaders?”, themes probably saved for a future volume.

Beyond that, this publication features a book-shaped hole in the middle. It’s an exercise in passive-aggressive self-defense, in coming close without actually saying the underlying truth, skipping adeptly from unsettled score to unscabbed wound across a series of pie charts, corporate platitudes and digressions about historical figures.

Reading Experience

Going through the book is like listening to your parents having a controlled but deeply felt argument in the next room while you’re striving to concentrate on a business seminar titled “112 Reasons Why Naturally I Had the Last Laugh”. But it is also impossible to stop reading, as the author keeps coming close to a topic you actually wish to hear about, before suddenly veering away.

Revelations

The book contains always controversial revelations in books like these, explained by the peeled-eyeball fascination with the role of England manager. The most notable instances encompass: he decided he was certainly going to quit as England manager after supporters hurled cups at him at the tournament; he nearly decided to withdrawing from the game at mid-match against Bulgaria in 2019 after his team were subjected to racism; he invented the concept of dedicated restart experts and the entire league in the Premier League is now adopting his methods; he has now lost his enthusiasm for the sport, a surprising confession casually mentioned in a single paragraph at the final part.

Guiding England through a period of rage, hope, political ferment and confinement was a brutal journey. The scars are obviously still unhealed.

Generic Content

Throughout much of the book, the narrative is overrun with an robotic verbal clutter of standard guidance discourse. Review editions of this publication were provided with critics under secrecy pacts ahead of launch, presumably out of concern someone might leak that “tough talks can, by their inherent quality, be tough”, that you should always consider the consequences, that management happens where transformation meets compassion.

Emotional Core

There is however authentic emotion within. Managing England through a era of fury, optimism, political ferment and lockdown was a brutal journey. The scars are clearly still unhealed, even if conveyed in a terminology-heavy reinvention of the standard leader story: how my decisions were correct about all matters from the start.

Detailed Instances

Even book’s initial chapter, disguised as exciting recollections of the deciding game of the European Championship, is completely dedicated to how successful Southgate really was at tactical substitutions (the primary common complaint revolving around he was not successful at altering the lineup). Later, he goes into significant detail about how he handled the Euros final of 2021 flawlessly – notably the unsuccessful spot-kick decider – because he adhered to a set protocol, which must mean that throwing on youthful talents very late to take the most important attempt of their existence was sensible and accurate.

That approach was proved right by a victorious tiebreaker against Switzerland at a later tournament after a match where England spent 120 minutes looking as if they were striving to wear a pullover the inside out. “Our commanding performance in that tiebreaker was absolutely exhilarating,” he notes, while comparing the display to special forces killing a high-profile target. Oh Gareth.

Withheld Details

When we do get close to a revelation, Southgate backs away from identifying individuals or sharing the substance. We discover there were challenging England individuals who required more focus, possibly because they were indulged at the start of their time in football. But as you anticipate expectantly, Southgate is quickly veering off into an area titled The Culture Code, which asserts that rather than a grouping of qualities or ideals, organizational ethos is in fact an element that is created by, alas, please, no more.

Highlights

Included in the more compelling sections are when Southgate discusses about the piecemeal nature of fostering mental toughness in young people, or how he sought to describe what it means to be English more coherently and more helpfully than anyone else in the public eye. Most impressively, there is a genuinely absorbing narrative of that distressing night in Sofia where England’s players of color were subjected to vile treatment (and subsequently supported vigorously by their coach).

Genuine Ending

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