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This soccer publication is curiously uninspiring, yet strangely compelling. Its title is confusing. Dear England currently is used by a successful theatrical production, an upcoming TV show, and a national address penned by the manager in 2021.

This version of Dear England isn’t officially related to any of those. It exists as an peculiar entry in the Dear England Multiverse, a book about guidance: a typically dull elite football manager subject that Southgate sticks to doggedly, using the words “leader”, “guiding” or “management” no fewer than 500 times across the book’s entirety.

Questions Explored

“What defines a leader? What actions do leaders take? What insights do leaders have?” Southgate inquires early on, setting out his position, but stopping short to ask “Why are leaders?”, topics presumably set aside for a second book.

Beyond that, this book features a notable absence throughout. It’s an exercise in passive-aggressive self-justification, in nearly but not entirely stating the actual thing, jumping nimbly from lingering grievance to fresh pain across a collection of data visualizations, business clichés and references about Thomas Cromwell.

Immersion

Engaging with the text is like overhearing your family members having a mannered but intensely emotional disagreement in the next room while you’re attempting to concentrate on a corporate presentation titled “Countless Explanations for My Eventual Success”. But it is also challenging to stop reading, as Southgate keeps approaching to a topic you truly wish to learn about, before unexpectedly shifting focus.

Insights

There are typically attention-grabbing disclosures in publications of this nature, due to the peeled-eyeball obsession with the role of England manager. The best instances include: he decided he was certainly going to step down as England manager after spectators threw containers at him at the Euros; he came very close to withdrawing from the game at half-time against the Bulgarian team in 2019 after his team were racially abused; he introduced the concept of specialist dead-ball trainers and everyone in the Premier League is now copying him; he has now lost his love for football, a surprising admission casually mentioned in a short passage at the conclusion.

Managing England through a era of fury, optimism, political ferment and confinement was a brutal ordeal. The wounds are evidently still raw.

Predictable Elements

Throughout much of the book, the content is overrun with an computer-generated verbal clutter of commonplace leadership chat. Review editions of this publication were shared with critics under confidentiality clauses ahead of launch, presumably out of fear someone might disclose that “difficult conversations can, by their nature, be difficult”, that you should always consider the consequences, that leadership takes place where change meets understanding.

Genuine Feeling

There is nevertheless genuine sentiment present. Leading England through a era of anger, aspiration, turmoil and pandemic restrictions was a harsh ordeal. The wounds are obviously still raw, though conveyed in a terminology-heavy reinterpretation of the classic leader theme: why I was actually right about each issue throughout.

Specific Examples

Even book’s opening passage, presented as thrilling memories of the championship match of the European Championship, is completely dedicated to how good the manager actually was at substitutes (the big Southgate gripe centering on he was not successful at making changes). Later, he explores significant detail about how he handled the deciding game of 2021 flawlessly – notably the losing penalty shootout – because he adhered to a set protocol, which implies that introducing youthful talents in the closing stages to take the biggest shot of their lives was logical and right.

This was proved right by a winning tiebreaker against Switzerland four years later after a game where England spent the entire match looking as if they were trying to wear a pullover the inside out. “Our commanding performance in that tiebreaker was truly thrilling,” Southgate writes, in between likening the display to US Navy Seals neutralizing Osama bin Laden. Goodness.

Avoided Revelations

When we come near to a disclosure, the manager withdraws from specifying people or giving us the details. We hear there were challenging England individuals who required more focus, maybe because they were spoilt at the start of their time in football. But as you anticipate hopefully, Southgate is already shifting into an area called The Culture Code, which asserts that instead of a grouping of attributes or principles, organizational ethos is in fact an element that is developed by, alas, enough, that’s sufficient.

Notable Sections

Among the stronger bits are when Southgate writes about the piecemeal nature of developing mental toughness in youth, or how he attempted to define what it means to be English more coherently and more positively than any other figure in the limelight. Best of all, there is a really compelling account of that distressing evening in Sofia where England’s players of color were subjected to vile treatment (and subsequently defended robustly by their leader).

Genuine Ending

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