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The football book is oddly tedious, yet oddly compelling. Even title is confusing. The Dear England title already belongs to a popular play, an upcoming TV show, and a national address authored by Gareth Southgate in 2021.

This edition of Dear England is not officially related to any of those. It exists as an oddity in the expanding Dear England universe, a book about management: a traditionally uninspiring top-level coach theme that Southgate sticks to relentlessly, relying on the words “leader”, “leading” or “management” a minimum of 500 times across its 336-page length.

Questions Posed

“What are leaders? What do leaders do? And what do leaders know?” the author questions early on, establishing his stall, but declining to ask “When are leaders?”, topics likely reserved for a future volume.

Beyond that, this book has a book-shaped hole in the middle. It’s a venture in passive-aggressive self-defense, in coming close without actually expressing the real point, jumping nimbly from unsettled score to raw emotion across a series of data visualizations, corporate platitudes and digressions about Thomas Cromwell.

Immersion

Engaging with the text is like eavesdropping on your family members having a controlled but intensely emotional debate in the next room while you’re trying to pay attention on a business seminar called “Countless Explanations for My Eventual Success”. But it is also impossible to disengage, as the author keeps coming close to an issue you truly want to discover, before suddenly shifting focus.

Disclosures

There are inevitably controversial revelations in works of this nature, explained by the intense obsession with leading the national team. The most notable instances encompass: Southgate decided he was definitely going to resign as England manager after fans hurled cups at him at the tournament; he nearly decided to forfeiting the game at mid-match against the Bulgarian team in 2019 after his players were targeted with slurs; he invented the concept of specialist dead-ball trainers and everyone in the English football is now adopting his methods; he has now abandoned his passion for football, a startling revelation briefly included in a short passage at the final part.

Guiding England through a period of rage, hope, turmoil and lockdown was a harsh ordeal. The bruises are obviously still raw.

Generic Content

In other sections, the content is flooded with an robotic linguistic mush of standard leadership chat. Review editions of this book were distributed with reviewers under secrecy pacts ahead of launch, presumably out of concern someone might disclose that “tough talks can, by their very essence, be difficult”, that you should always consider the consequences, that leadership occurs where transformation combines with empathy.

Genuine Feeling

Readers will find nevertheless genuine feeling present. Managing England through a time of fury, hope, upheaval and pandemic restrictions was a grueling ordeal. The wounds are obviously still fresh, even if presented in a buzzword-filled reinvention of the standard football manager story: demonstrating my accuracy about each issue from the start.

Notable Cases

The book’s opening passage, presented as exciting accounts of the final of the tournament, is completely dedicated to how good Southgate actually was at player changes (the big criticism of Southgate centering on he wasn’t effective at altering the lineup). Subsequently, he explores extensive analysis about how he oversaw the Euros final of 2021 impeccably – notably the failed tiebreaker – because he complied with a set protocol, which suggests that bringing on young players at the last moment to take the biggest attempt of their lives was logical and correct.

That approach was validated by a winning shootout against Switzerland four years later after a match where England spent the entire match looking as if they were striving to wear a pullover the backwards. “The control we exerted in that penalty decider was truly exhilarating,” the author notes, in between comparing the showing to US Navy Seals killing Osama bin Laden. Oh Gareth.

Withheld Details

On the occasions we approach to a insight, he retreats from identifying individuals or providing the substance. We learn there were problematic England players who required more attention, possibly because they were spoilt early in their time in football. But as you anticipate eagerly, Southgate is already shifting into a topic named The Culture Code, which states that as opposed to a collection of characteristics or ideals, organizational ethos is in fact something that is developed by, gah, enough, no more.

Notable Sections

Included in the more compelling bits are when Southgate writes about the piecemeal method of building mental toughness in the next generation, or how he attempted to define national identity more lucidly and more helpfully than any other figure in the public eye. Most impressively, there is a really absorbing account of that harrowing evening in the Bulgarian capital where England’s black players were viciously abused (and afterwards defended forcefully by their leader).

Heartfelt Conclusion

Possibly the most sincere part {comes|arrives|appears