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This soccer book is strangely uninspiring, yet oddly captivating. Even title raises questions. The Dear England title already names a successful play, an future TV show, and a open letter penned by Gareth Southgate in 2021.

This version of Dear England is not officially related to those. It stands as an anomaly in the Dear England Multiverse, a book about management: a typically dry elite football manager subject that the author adheres to relentlessly, employing the words “leadership”, “leading” or “management” a minimum of 500 times across the book’s entirety.

Questions Raised

“What defines a leader? What actions do leaders take? And what do leaders know?” Southgate inquires at the outset, outlining his position, but stopping short to address “Why are leaders?”, questions presumably reserved for a second book.

Otherwise, this publication features a significant gap throughout. It’s an attempt in passive-aggressive personal vindication, in almost-but-not-quite expressing the actual thing, skipping adeptly from unsettled score to raw emotion across a collection of graphs, business clichés and digressions about Thomas Cromwell.

Engagement

Engaging with the text is like listening to your family members having a mannered but deeply felt debate in the adjacent space while you’re striving to pay attention on a corporate presentation titled “Countless Explanations for My Eventual Success”. But it is also impossible to stop reading, as Southgate keeps drifting near to a topic you actually wish to hear about, before unexpectedly veering away.

Disclosures

There are always controversial revelations in works in this genre, such is the rapt interest with the role of England manager. The most notable examples are: he made up his mind he was absolutely going to step down as England manager after fans tossed cups at him at the European Championship; he came very close to abandoning the game at half-time against Bulgaria in 2019 after his team were targeted with slurs; he pioneered the concept of dedicated restart experts and all teams in the Premier League is now adopting his methods; he has now abandoned his passion for soccer, a surprising revelation casually mentioned in a short passage at the conclusion.

Guiding England through a period of anger, optimism, turmoil and confinement was a brutal journey. The wounds are obviously still unhealed.

Predictable Elements

Otherwise, the content is overrun with an robotic word-sludge of generic leadership chat. Review editions of this publication were shared with journalists under confidentiality clauses ahead of launch, probably out of concern someone might leak that “tough talks can, by their nature, be difficult”, that you should always consider the consequences, that guidance takes place where transformation intersects with empathy.

Genuine Feeling

The book contains nonetheless real sentiment within. Managing England through a time of fury, hope, turmoil and confinement was a grueling experience. The scars are obviously still unhealed, albeit expressed in a buzzword-filled reimagining of the traditional leader narrative: demonstrating my accuracy about all matters all along.

Specific Examples

The publication’s opening passage, disguised as thrilling accounts of the championship match of the European Championship, is all about how successful the manager in fact was at substitutes (the big criticism of Southgate being he was not successful at altering the lineup). Further on, he delves into extensive analysis about how he handled the Euros final of 2021 flawlessly – specifically the unsuccessful penalty shootout – because he complied with a predetermined process, which implies that introducing youthful talents at the last moment to take the most important attempt of their existence was logical and correct.

This was validated by a successful shootout against Switzerland in a subsequent competition after a game where England spent the entire match looking as if they were attempting to wear a pullover the backwards. “Our dominance in that tiebreaker was simply exciting,” the author notes, while likening the performance to US Navy Seals killing Osama bin Laden. Dear me.

Avoided Revelations

On the occasions we do get close to a revelation, Southgate backs away from identifying individuals or sharing the details. We hear there were difficult England individuals who insisted on more consideration, possibly because they were spoilt early in their time in football. But as you anticipate expectantly, he is already diverting into something titled The Culture Code, which states that as opposed to a collection of attributes or values, culture is in fact something that is created by, gah, enough, we’ve heard enough.

Highlights

Included in the more compelling parts are when he explores about the gradual method of fostering resilience in the next generation, or how he sought to articulate Englishness more lucidly and more positively than anyone else in the limelight. Best of all, there is a truly absorbing narrative of that traumatic evening in Sofia where England’s players of color were targeted with hatred (and subsequently defended forcefully by their leader).

Heartfelt Conclusion

Perhaps the most sincere part {comes|arrives|appears