🔗 Share this article

This soccer book is strangely dull, yet strangely irresistible. Its title raises questions. The Dear England title already is used by a popular theatrical production, an upcoming TV show, and a open letter written by Gareth Southgate in 2021.

This iteration of Dear England isn’t officially related to any of those. It exists as an peculiar entry in the expanding Dear England universe, a book about leadership: a typically dry top-level coach theme that Southgate follows relentlessly, employing the words “leadership”, “leading” or “leadership” at least 500 times across 336 pages.

Inquiries Raised

“What defines a leader? What do leaders do? What knowledge do leaders possess?” the author questions early on, setting out his position, but choosing not to ask “How are leaders?”, questions likely set aside for a second book.

Otherwise, this publication features a significant gap in the middle. It’s an attempt in indirectly hostile personal vindication, in nearly but not entirely stating the real point, skipping skillfully from lingering grievance to unscabbed wound across a collection of graphs, management jargon and digressions about historical figures.

Reading Experience

Engaging with the text is like eavesdropping on your parents having a mannered but intensely emotional disagreement in the adjacent space while you’re trying to pay attention on a business seminar named “Countless Explanations for My Eventual Success”. But it is also challenging to stop reading, as the author keeps approaching to something you genuinely wish to hear about, before suddenly shifting focus.

Revelations

Readers will find typically controversial revelations in works in this genre, due to the intense obsession with leading the national team. The best examples encompass: the manager resolved he was absolutely going to step down as England manager after spectators hurled beer glasses at him at the tournament; he came very close to abandoning the game at half-time against Bulgaria in 2019 after his team were subjected to racism; he invented the approach of dedicated restart experts and the entire league in the Premier League is now following his lead; he has now misplaced his enthusiasm for soccer, a startling confession casually mentioned in a single paragraph at the conclusion.

Guiding England through a time of anger, optimism, upheaval and confinement was a harsh experience. The wounds are evidently still raw.

Predictable Elements

Otherwise, the content is overrun with an robotic word-sludge of generic management talk. Copies of this book were distributed with critics under non-disclosure agreements before publication, presumably out of concern someone might reveal that “challenging discussions can, by their very essence, be difficult”, that you should always look before you leap, that management takes place where evolution intersects with understanding.

Emotional Core

Readers will find nonetheless real sentiment here. Guiding England through a period of fury, optimism, upheaval and pandemic restrictions was a brutal experience. The wounds are clearly still raw, albeit presented in a jargon-laden reinvention of the standard football manager narrative: why I was actually right about each issue throughout.

Notable Cases

Even publication’s introductory section, presented as gripping accounts of the championship match of Euro 2024, is completely dedicated to how effective the manager actually was at substitutes (the primary common complaint revolving around he was not effective at substitutes). Later, he goes into significant detail about how he oversaw the deciding game of 2021 flawlessly – specifically the failed tiebreaker – because he complied with a predetermined process, which suggests that introducing young players at the last moment to take the most important kick of their lives was reasonable and right.

This was validated by a successful penalty decider against the Swiss team at a later tournament after a game where England spent the full duration looking as if they were attempting to don a sweater the backwards. “Our dominance in that shootout was absolutely exhilarating,” he notes, in between equating the showing to special forces neutralizing Osama bin Laden. Oh Gareth.

Missed Opportunities

When we come near to a revelation, he backs away from naming names or sharing the juice. We learn there were problematic England players who demanded more focus, maybe because they were spoilt during the beginning of their professional journeys. But as you lean forward hopefully, he is quickly veering off into something called a specific management theory, which asserts that instead of a grouping of qualities or values, team environment is in fact an element that is formed by, alas, please, we’ve heard enough.

Strengths

Among the better bits are when Southgate writes about the gradual nature of building resilience in young people, or how he sought to articulate Englishness more clearly and more positively than any other figure in the spotlight. Best of all, there is a really gripping description of that harrowing night in Sofia where England’s players of color were viciously abused (and afterwards supported forcefully by their leader).

Genuine Ending

Perhaps the most heartfelt section {comes|arrives|appears