🔗 Share this article

This soccer publication is strangely uninspiring, yet oddly irresistible. Its title causes confusion. Dear England already names a successful play, an future TV show, and a open letter penned by the manager in 2021.

This version of Dear England isn’t officially tied to any of those. It represents an peculiar entry in the expanding Dear England universe, a book about leadership: a classically dull elite football manager subject that Southgate follows persistently, employing the words “leadership”, “guiding” or “management” at least 500 times across its 336-page length.

Inquiries Explored

“What defines a leader? What is the role of a leader? What insights do leaders have?” Southgate inquires early on, establishing his argument, but declining to explore “Why are leaders?”, themes likely reserved for a follow-up publication.

Otherwise, this book features a significant gap at its core. It’s an attempt in subtly confrontational personal vindication, in nearly but not entirely stating the real point, jumping adeptly from unsettled score to fresh pain across a collection of pie charts, business clichés and digressions about Thomas Cromwell.

Engagement

Reading it is like overhearing your loved ones having a controlled but deeply felt debate in the adjacent space while you’re trying to pay attention on a professional workshop titled “Numerous Justifications for My Ultimate Victory”. But it is also difficult to put down, as Southgate keeps approaching to a topic you actually wish to discover, before abruptly changing tack.

Disclosures

Readers will find always attention-grabbing disclosures in works of this nature, explained by the rapt interest with the role of England manager. The best examples include: he made up his mind he was certainly going to quit as England manager after supporters tossed cups at him at the tournament; he nearly decided to abandoning the game at the interval against the Bulgarian team in 2019 after his squad members were racially abused; he pioneered the concept of dedicated restart experts and all teams in the Premier League is now adopting his methods; he has now lost his enthusiasm for football, a startling revelation briefly included in a single paragraph at the end.

Leading England through a time of fury, aspiration, turmoil and confinement was a brutal ordeal. The scars are obviously still raw.

Generic Content

Throughout much of the book, the content is saturated with an computer-generated word-sludge of standard leadership chat. Copies of this book were shared with journalists under non-disclosure agreements ahead of release, probably out of concern someone might reveal that “difficult conversations can, by their nature, be challenging”, that you should always consider the consequences, that leadership occurs where transformation meets empathy.

Genuine Feeling

There is nonetheless authentic feeling within. Managing England through a era of rage, aspiration, turmoil and pandemic restrictions was a harsh journey. The scars are evidently still unhealed, albeit presented in a terminology-heavy reinterpretation of the traditional leader story: how my decisions were correct about everything from the start.

Specific Examples

Even book’s opening passage, disguised as exciting recollections of the championship match of the European Championship, is completely dedicated to how successful Southgate actually was at tactical substitutions (the big common complaint being he wasn’t good at making changes). Further on, he delves into extensive analysis about how he oversaw the championship match of 2021 flawlessly – notably the unsuccessful tiebreaker – because he followed a set protocol, which suggests that introducing youthful talents at the last moment to take the most important attempt of their existence was logical and accurate.

This was confirmed by a winning tiebreaker against the Swiss team at a later tournament after a game where England spent 120 minutes looking as if they were striving to put on a jumper the inside out. “Our commanding performance in that penalty decider was truly thrilling,” Southgate states, while equating the display to special forces neutralizing a high-profile target. Oh Gareth.

Withheld Details

When we do get close to a disclosure, Southgate withdraws from identifying individuals or giving us the details. We learn there were problematic England players who required more consideration, possibly because they were indulged at the start of their time in football. But as you expect eagerly, he is already diverting into a topic titled a specific management theory, which asserts that instead of a grouping of qualities or ideals, culture is in fact a phenomenon that is created by, gah, enough, no more.

Highlights

Within the more compelling bits are when Southgate discusses about the incremental method of developing resilience in youth, or how he sought to describe what it means to be English more coherently and more constructively than any other figure in the limelight. Most impressively, there is a genuinely gripping account of that harrowing night in the Bulgarian capital where England’s players of color were viciously abused (and subsequently supported vigorously by their coach).

Genuine Ending

Possibly the most sincere part {comes|arrives|appears