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This football book is curiously tedious, yet strangely irresistible. Its title causes confusion. The Dear England title already names a hit theatrical production, an future television program, and a national address written by the manager in 2021.

This edition of Dear England is not officially tied to those. It exists as an oddity in the Dear England Multiverse, a volume about guidance: a typically dry elite football manager trope that Southgate follows doggedly, employing the words “leadership”, “guiding” or “leadership” a minimum of 500 times across the book’s entirety.

Inquiries Raised

“Who are the leaders? What do leaders do? And what do leaders know?” Southgate inquires at the outset, setting out his position, but stopping short to address “How are leaders?”, questions probably set aside for a follow-up publication.

Additionally, this publication contains a notable absence throughout. It’s an attempt in passive-aggressive self-justification, in coming close without actually expressing the actual thing, hopping nimbly from unsettled score to fresh pain across a assortment of data visualizations, business clichés and digressions about historical figures.

Immersion

Reading it is like eavesdropping on your loved ones having a mannered but intensely emotional debate in the adjacent space while you’re attempting to focus on a professional workshop called “Numerous Justifications for My Ultimate Victory”. But it is also difficult to disengage, as Southgate keeps coming close to something you truly want to learn about, before suddenly veering away.

Revelations

There are always controversial revelations in publications in this genre, due to the peeled-eyeball fascination with England managerdom. The most notable ones are: Southgate resolved he was definitely going to step down as England manager after spectators threw beer glasses at him at the tournament; he almost chose to withdrawing from the game at the interval against the Bulgarian team in 2019 after his players were targeted with slurs; he invented the approach of specialist dead-ball trainers and the entire league in the English football is now following his lead; he has now misplaced his love for the sport, a surprising admission thrown away in a single paragraph at the end.

Managing England through a period of rage, hope, political ferment and confinement was a harsh journey. The bruises are clearly still unhealed.

Predictable Elements

Throughout much of the book, the text is overrun with an computer-generated verbal clutter of commonplace management talk. Review editions of this publication were distributed with journalists under non-disclosure agreements prior to launch, probably out of concern someone might reveal that “tough talks can, by their very essence, be tough”, that you should always think before you act, that guidance happens where evolution meets compassion.

Emotional Core

Readers will find nevertheless genuine feeling present. Managing England through a time of fury, aspiration, political ferment and confinement was a grueling ordeal. The bruises are clearly still raw, albeit conveyed in a jargon-laden reinvention of the standard football manager narrative: how my decisions were correct about all matters from the start.

Notable Cases

The book’s introductory section, Trojan-horsed as gripping memories of the deciding game of the tournament, is completely dedicated to how effective the manager really was at substitutes (the primary common complaint centering on he was not successful at substitutes). Further on, he goes into significant detail about how he handled the championship match of 2021 impeccably – notably the unsuccessful tiebreaker – because he adhered to a predetermined process, which suggests that introducing youthful talents very late to take the biggest attempt of their existence was sensible and accurate.

This was confirmed by a victorious penalty decider against the Swiss team at a later tournament after a game where England spent the entire match looking as if they were attempting to wear a pullover the inside out. “Our dominance in that tiebreaker was simply exciting,” the author states, amid equating the display to special forces killing Osama bin Laden. Goodness.

Missed Opportunities

When we do get close to a disclosure, he withdraws from naming names or sharing the juice. We hear there were problematic England squad members who required more attention, maybe because they were spoilt at the start of their professional journeys. But as you expect eagerly, the author is quickly shifting into something titled a leadership concept, which asserts that instead of a assemblage of qualities or ideals, culture is in fact an element that is formed by, unfortunately, enough, no more.

Notable Sections

Within the stronger bits are when the author discusses about the piecemeal process of developing fortitude in the next generation, or how he sought to define national identity more clearly and more helpfully than any other figure in the spotlight. Most impressively, there is a truly absorbing narrative of that traumatic evening in the Bulgarian capital where England’s players of color were targeted with hatred (and subsequently protected robustly by their leader).

Sincere Finale

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