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This soccer book is oddly uninspiring, yet oddly irresistible. Its title causes confusion. Dear England already names a popular theatrical production, an future television program, and a national address penned by the manager in 2021.

This version of Dear England is not officially tied to any of those. It stands as an oddity in the Dear England Multiverse, a book about management: a classically uninspiring elite football manager trope that the author adheres to doggedly, using the words “leader”, “leading” or “management” no fewer than 500 times across its 336-page length.

Themes Posed

“What defines a leader? What actions do leaders take? And what do leaders know?” Southgate inquires in the opening, setting out his position, but choosing not to address “How are leaders?”, themes presumably set aside for a future volume.

Beyond that, this publication features a significant gap throughout. It’s a venture in passive-aggressive self-justification, in coming close without actually expressing the real point, jumping skillfully from unresolved issue to raw emotion across a series of data visualizations, business clichés and digressions about Thomas Cromwell.

Engagement

Going through the book is like overhearing your loved ones having a mannered but deeply felt debate in the adjacent space while you’re striving to focus on a business seminar called “Numerous Justifications for My Ultimate Victory”. But it is also difficult to stop reading, as Southgate keeps coming close to something you genuinely desire to discover, before suddenly changing tack.

Disclosures

Readers will find typically controversial revelations in books of this nature, due to the rapt obsession with England managerdom. The best examples are: he decided he was certainly going to step down as England manager after fans hurled cups at him at the Euros; he came very close to abandoning the game at mid-match against Bulgaria in 2019 after his squad members were targeted with slurs; he pioneered the concept of dedicated restart experts and the entire league in the Premier League is now following his lead; he has now misplaced his love for soccer, a shocking confession casually mentioned in a single paragraph at the final part.

Guiding England through a era of rage, optimism, upheaval and confinement was a grueling experience. The bruises are evidently still fresh.

Commonplace Material

In other sections, the content is flooded with an robotic verbal clutter of commonplace leadership chat. Copies of this book were provided with reviewers under non-disclosure agreements prior to launch, probably out of fear someone might disclose that “challenging discussions can, by their inherent quality, be tough”, that you should always consider the consequences, that management happens where transformation intersects with compassion.

Sincere Expression

There is nevertheless genuine emotion within. Leading England through a era of anger, aspiration, upheaval and confinement was a grueling experience. The scars are evidently still fresh, albeit conveyed in a terminology-heavy reinvention of the classic coach theme: demonstrating my accuracy about each issue from the start.

Specific Examples

Even book’s opening passage, Trojan-horsed as gripping recollections of the championship match of the European Championship, is completely dedicated to how good Southgate really was at tactical substitutions (the major Southgate gripe revolving around he was not good at substitutes). Subsequently, he delves into significant detail about how he managed the deciding game of 2021 flawlessly – notably the failed tiebreaker – because he followed a predetermined process, which implies that bringing on inexperienced squad members in the closing stages to take the crucial kick of their careers was sensible and correct.

This was confirmed by a victorious shootout against the Swiss team four years later after a match where England spent 120 minutes looking as if they were striving to put on a jumper the backwards. “The control we exerted in that penalty decider was absolutely exhilarating,” he writes, amid equating the showing to elite military units eliminating a high-profile target. Goodness.

Missed Opportunities

When we do get close to a revelation, he withdraws from naming names or giving us the juice. We learn there were challenging England squad members who required more focus, perhaps because they were pampered early in their careers. But as you lean forward eagerly, the author is already veering off into a topic called The Culture Code, which states that as opposed to a grouping of characteristics or values, culture is in fact a phenomenon that is created by, unfortunately, please, we’ve heard enough.

Highlights

Within the more compelling bits are when the author writes about the piecemeal method of building resilience in youth, or how he tried to describe Englishness more coherently and more helpfully than any other figure in the spotlight. Most impressively, there is a really absorbing account of that distressing match in Sofia where England’s African heritage squad members were targeted with hatred (and afterwards supported vigorously by their coach).

Sincere Finale

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