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The football book is oddly dull, yet strangely compelling. Its title raises questions. The Dear England title currently names a successful theatrical production, an forthcoming television program, and a open letter written by the manager in 2021.

This edition of Dear England is not officially tied to any of those. It represents an anomaly in the Dear England Multiverse, a volume about guidance: a classically dull elite football manager theme that the author adheres to doggedly, relying on the words “leadership”, “guiding” or “leadership” no fewer than 500 times across 336 pages.

Inquiries Posed

“What are leaders? What is the role of a leader? And what do leaders know?” Southgate inquires early on, setting out his position, but declining to explore “When are leaders?”, themes likely reserved for a future volume.

Otherwise, this book contains a significant gap at its core. It’s an attempt in indirectly hostile self-justification, in almost-but-not-quite expressing the real point, hopping adeptly from unsettled score to raw emotion across a assortment of pie charts, corporate platitudes and digressions about historical figures.

Immersion

Engaging with the text is like listening to your parents having a controlled but deeply felt argument in the nearby area while you’re striving to focus on a professional workshop called “Countless Explanations for My Eventual Success”. But it is also challenging to stop reading, as Southgate keeps coming close to a topic you genuinely want to hear about, before unexpectedly shifting focus.

Insights

There are inevitably news headlines in books in this genre, due to the peeled-eyeball obsession with the role of England manager. The best instances include: he made up his mind he was absolutely going to resign as England manager after spectators threw beer glasses at him at the European Championship; he almost chose to forfeiting the game at mid-match against the Bulgarian team in 2019 after his team were racially abused; he pioneered the approach of specialist dead-ball trainers and the entire league in the Premier League is now adopting his methods; he has now abandoned his enthusiasm for soccer, a shocking revelation thrown away in a single paragraph at the conclusion.

Leading England through a time of rage, optimism, turmoil and lockdown was a harsh journey. The scars are evidently still fresh.

Predictable Elements

In other sections, the text is overrun with an computer-generated linguistic mush of generic management talk. Copies of this publication were distributed with journalists under confidentiality clauses ahead of launch, presumably out of concern someone might disclose that “difficult conversations can, by their nature, be challenging”, that you should always look before you leap, that leadership takes place where change combines with compassion.

Sincere Expression

There is nonetheless genuine emotion within. Leading England through a period of rage, hope, turmoil and pandemic restrictions was a grueling ordeal. The wounds are clearly still raw, albeit expressed in a jargon-laden reimagining of the traditional football manager narrative: how my decisions were correct about everything all along.

Specific Examples

Even publication’s introductory section, Trojan-horsed as exciting memories of the deciding game of the tournament, is entirely focused on how successful Southgate in fact was at player changes (the primary criticism of Southgate centering on he was not effective at substitutes). Further on, he explores significant detail about how he managed the championship match of 2021 impeccably – specifically the losing spot-kick decider – because he complied with a predetermined process, which suggests that bringing on young players at the last moment to take the biggest shot of their careers was logical and correct.

This was proved right by a winning penalty decider against the Swiss team at a later tournament after a game where England spent 120 minutes looking as if they were trying to put on a jumper the wrong way round. “Our commanding performance in that tiebreaker was absolutely exciting,” the author writes, while equating the showing to US Navy Seals killing Osama bin Laden. Oh Gareth.

Withheld Details

When we come near to a disclosure, Southgate retreats from specifying people or providing the details. We discover there were challenging England squad members who insisted on more focus, perhaps because they were spoilt early in their careers. But as you lean forward eagerly, Southgate is quickly diverting into something called The Culture Code, which claims that instead of a grouping of qualities or ideals, organizational ethos is in fact something that is formed by, gah, enough, no more.

Notable Sections

Among the better sections are when he writes about the gradual process of developing fortitude in youth, or how he tried to define Englishness more lucidly and more helpfully than any other figure in the limelight. Best of all, there is a genuinely compelling account of that distressing night in Sofia where England’s African heritage squad members were subjected to vile treatment (and subsequently protected robustly by their manager).

Heartfelt Conclusion

Perhaps the most emotional segment {comes|arrives|appears