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The soccer publication is curiously uninspiring, yet strangely compelling. Its title raises questions. Dear England already names a successful play, an upcoming television program, and a open letter penned by Gareth Southgate in 2021.

This edition of Dear England is not officially tied to those. It represents an anomaly in the Dear England Multiverse, a book about leadership: a typically dull elite football manager theme that Southgate adheres to persistently, relying on the words “leadership”, “leading” or “management” at least 500 times across the book’s entirety.

Themes Posed

“Who are the leaders? What do leaders do? What knowledge do leaders possess?” Southgate inquires in the opening, setting out his argument, but stopping short to address “Why are leaders?”, themes probably saved for a second book.

Otherwise, this book has a significant gap throughout. It’s an attempt in passive-aggressive self-defense, in nearly but not entirely saying the actual thing, skipping skillfully from unresolved issue to unscabbed wound across a assortment of data visualizations, management jargon and references about Thomas Cromwell.

Engagement

Reading it is like listening to your loved ones having a polite but intensely emotional disagreement in the nearby area while you’re attempting to focus on a corporate presentation called “112 Reasons Why Naturally I Had the Last Laugh”. But it is also challenging to put down, as the author keeps drifting near to something you genuinely desire to learn about, before abruptly veering away.

Revelations

There are typically controversial revelations in works like these, due to the intense obsession with the role of England manager. The most striking examples include: the manager decided he was certainly going to resign as England manager after fans threw cups at him at the Euros; he almost chose to forfeiting the game at mid-match against Bulgaria in 2019 after his players were targeted with slurs; he introduced the idea of dedicated restart experts and all teams in the Premier League is now adopting his methods; he has now lost his passion for the sport, a shocking admission thrown away in a brief section at the end.

Guiding England through a time of anger, hope, turmoil and confinement was a grueling experience. The bruises are clearly still unhealed.

Commonplace Material

Throughout much of the book, the text is saturated with an AI-style word-sludge of standard management talk. Advanced copies of this book were shared with reviewers under non-disclosure agreements before release, presumably out of fear someone might leak that “difficult conversations can, by their inherent quality, be difficult”, that you should always consider the consequences, that management takes place where change meets understanding.

Genuine Feeling

The book contains however genuine feeling within. Leading England through a era of fury, aspiration, upheaval and confinement was a grueling journey. The wounds are evidently still fresh, albeit conveyed in a buzzword-filled reimagining of the classic football manager theme: demonstrating my accuracy about all matters from the start.

Notable Cases

Even publication’s opening passage, presented as gripping recollections of the championship match of the tournament, is entirely focused on how successful Southgate actually was at tactical substitutions (the primary Southgate gripe revolving around he wasn’t good at altering the lineup). Later, he delves into extensive analysis about how he handled the championship match of 2021 flawlessly – specifically the failed tiebreaker – because he followed a set protocol, which implies that introducing youthful talents in the closing stages to take the most important shot of their lives was sensible and right.

This was confirmed by a victorious shootout against the Swiss team in a subsequent competition after a fixture where England spent 120 minutes looking as if they were striving to wear a pullover the wrong way round. “The control we exerted in that shootout was absolutely exhilarating,” he writes, in between comparing the performance to US Navy Seals killing a notorious figure. Goodness.

Avoided Revelations

When we come near to a revelation, the manager withdraws from specifying people or giving us the juice. We hear there were challenging England players who demanded more consideration, possibly because they were spoilt during the beginning of their careers. But as you expect expectantly, he is already diverting into an area named a leadership concept, which states that instead of a collection of attributes or ideals, culture is in fact something that is formed by, unfortunately, stop, no more.

Strengths

Within the more compelling bits are when the author writes about the incremental nature of developing resilience in youth, or how he sought to define what it means to be English more clearly and more helpfully than anyone else in the spotlight. The standout section, there is a really absorbing account of that harrowing evening in the Bulgarian capital where England’s black players were targeted with hatred (and subsequently protected forcefully by their leader).

Genuine Ending

Perhaps the most sincere part {comes|arrives|appears