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The football book is curiously tedious, yet oddly irresistible. Its title raises questions. The Dear England title currently names a successful play, an future TV show, and a open letter written by the manager in 2021.

This iteration of Dear England isn’t officially related to those. It exists as an oddity in the Dear England Multiverse, a book about management: a traditionally uninspiring elite football manager theme that the author adheres to persistently, relying on the words “leader”, “leading” or “management” at least 500 times across its 336-page length.

Inquiries Explored

“What are leaders? What is the role of a leader? And what do leaders know?” he asks at the outset, establishing his argument, but choosing not to ask “How are leaders?”, questions presumably saved for a follow-up publication.

Otherwise, this book features a significant gap in the middle. It’s an exercise in passive-aggressive self-justification, in coming close without actually saying the real point, skipping adeptly from unresolved issue to unscabbed wound across a collection of pie charts, business clichés and digressions about Thomas Cromwell.

Reading Experience

Going through the book is like eavesdropping on your parents having a mannered but profoundly personal disagreement in the adjacent space while you’re striving to pay attention on a corporate presentation called “Countless Explanations for My Eventual Success”. But it is also impossible to disengage, as Southgate keeps drifting near to an issue you truly wish to discover, before unexpectedly changing tack.

Disclosures

There are typically attention-grabbing disclosures in publications like these, due to the intense obsession with leading the national team. The most notable ones include: he resolved he was certainly going to resign as England manager after supporters threw beer glasses at him at the European Championship; he nearly decided to forfeiting the game at mid-match against Bulgaria in 2019 after his squad members were subjected to racism; he pioneered the concept of set-piece coaches and the entire league in the English football is now copying him; he has now abandoned his love for the sport, a shocking revelation casually mentioned in a brief section at the final part.

Guiding England through a period of fury, optimism, turmoil and confinement was a grueling ordeal. The scars are evidently still unhealed.

Commonplace Material

Throughout much of the book, the text is flooded with an AI-style verbal clutter of generic management talk. Advanced copies of this publication were shared with journalists under non-disclosure agreements ahead of launch, presumably out of concern someone might disclose that “challenging discussions can, by their very essence, be challenging”, that you should always think before you act, that leadership occurs where change meets understanding.

Genuine Feeling

There is however real feeling within. Guiding England through a time of anger, aspiration, upheaval and confinement was a grueling ordeal. The scars are evidently still fresh, though conveyed in a jargon-laden reinvention of the classic football manager story: how my decisions were correct about all matters throughout.

Notable Cases

The publication’s initial chapter, disguised as exciting recollections of the championship match of the tournament, is entirely focused on how successful Southgate really was at tactical substitutions (the big Southgate gripe centering on he was not good at substitutes). Later, he goes into great depth about how he oversaw the championship match of 2021 impeccably – notably the failed spot-kick decider – because he followed a predetermined process, which must mean that throwing on young players very late to take the crucial shot of their careers was reasonable and right.

That approach was proved right by a successful penalty decider against the Swiss team at a later tournament after a fixture where England spent the full duration looking as if they were trying to don a sweater the wrong way round. “The control we exerted in that penalty decider was absolutely exhilarating,” Southgate notes, while comparing the display to US Navy Seals eliminating Osama bin Laden. Goodness.

Avoided Revelations

On the occasions we do get close to a insight, the manager withdraws from identifying individuals or sharing the details. We discover there were problematic England individuals who demanded more consideration, possibly because they were spoilt during the beginning of their careers. But as you expect eagerly, he is already veering off into an area named The Culture Code, which claims that rather than a assemblage of characteristics or ideals, culture is in fact a phenomenon that is created by, alas, stop, no more.

Strengths

Among the better bits are when Southgate explores about the piecemeal process of building fortitude in young people, or how he attempted to describe national identity more lucidly and more positively than anyone else in the spotlight. Most impressively, there is a really compelling account of that traumatic match in the Bulgarian capital where England’s players of color were targeted with hatred (and afterwards protected forcefully by their manager).

Heartfelt Conclusion

Maybe the most emotional section {comes|arrives|appears