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This football book is oddly dull, yet oddly captivating. Its title is confusing. The Dear England title currently is used by a popular theatrical production, an upcoming television program, and a national address penned by the manager in 2021.

This edition of Dear England is not officially related to any of those. It stands as an peculiar entry in the expanding Dear England universe, a book about guidance: a traditionally dull top-level coach subject that the author sticks to persistently, employing the words “leadership”, “leading” or “leadership” at least 500 times across 336 pages.

Questions Raised

“Who are the leaders? What actions do leaders take? What insights do leaders have?” he asks at the outset, establishing his position, but stopping short to address “Why are leaders?”, themes probably set aside for a future volume.

Additionally, this publication features a significant gap at its core. It’s an exercise in subtly confrontational self-justification, in nearly but not entirely stating the real point, skipping adeptly from lingering grievance to unscabbed wound across a series of data visualizations, management jargon and references about 16th-century statesmen.

Reading Experience

Going through the book is like eavesdropping on your parents having a controlled but intensely emotional debate in the next room while you’re striving to concentrate on a corporate presentation titled “Countless Explanations for My Eventual Success”. But it is also difficult to put down, as Southgate keeps drifting near to something you actually want to discover, before abruptly changing tack.

Revelations

The book contains always controversial revelations in books like these, due to the rapt interest with England managerdom. The most striking examples encompass: the manager resolved he was absolutely going to resign as England manager after fans tossed cups at him at the European Championship; he came very close to abandoning the game at half-time against Bulgaria in 2019 after his players were racially abused; he introduced the concept of dedicated restart experts and the entire league in the top division is now following his lead; he has now lost his passion for football, a surprising revelation briefly included in a brief section at the end.

Guiding England through a period of rage, optimism, upheaval and lockdown was a brutal experience. The bruises are clearly still unhealed.

Predictable Elements

In other sections, the text is overrun with an robotic linguistic mush of commonplace guidance discourse. Review editions of this publication were provided with journalists under non-disclosure agreements before release, likely out of concern someone might disclose that “difficult conversations can, by their very essence, be challenging”, that you should always consider the consequences, that leadership occurs where evolution combines with empathy.

Genuine Feeling

Readers will find nonetheless authentic feeling within. Guiding England through a time of anger, hope, political ferment and pandemic restrictions was a brutal experience. The scars are clearly still fresh, though presented in a buzzword-filled reinterpretation of the traditional football manager narrative: how my decisions were correct about all matters all along.

Specific Examples

Even publication’s introductory section, Trojan-horsed as exciting recollections of the deciding game of Euro 2024, is completely dedicated to how successful he in fact was at substitutes (the major common complaint being he wasn’t successful at altering the lineup). Further on, he delves into significant detail about how he managed the Euros final of 2021 impeccably – particularly the unsuccessful spot-kick decider – because he followed a predetermined process, which suggests that throwing on inexperienced squad members very late to take the most important shot of their existence was logical and accurate.

This was proved right by a victorious penalty decider against the Swiss team four years later after a game where England spent 120 minutes looking as if they were trying to wear a pullover the backwards. “The control we exerted in that shootout was absolutely thrilling,” the author writes, amid likening the performance to elite military units killing Osama bin Laden. Oh Gareth.

Avoided Revelations

On the occasions we do get close to a insight, the manager retreats from specifying people or providing the substance. We learn there were problematic England players who insisted on more consideration, perhaps because they were pampered early in their time in football. But as you lean forward hopefully, the author is quickly diverting into something titled a specific management theory, which claims that as opposed to a grouping of attributes or ideals, organizational ethos is in fact something that is formed by, unfortunately, stop, no more.

Strengths

Among the better sections are when the author discusses about the incremental process of building fortitude in young people, or how he attempted to define Englishness more clearly and more positively than any other figure in the spotlight. The standout section, there is a truly compelling narrative of that distressing evening in the Bulgarian capital where England’s African heritage squad members were targeted with hatred (and afterwards defended robustly by their coach).

Sincere Finale

Perhaps the most emotional part {comes|arrives|appears