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This soccer book is oddly dull, yet curiously compelling. Its title causes confusion. The Dear England title already names a popular play, an forthcoming television program, and a open letter authored by the manager in 2021.

This iteration of Dear England isn’t formally connected to those. It represents an anomaly in the expanding Dear England universe, a book about management: a classically dull elite football manager theme that the author adheres to relentlessly, employing the words “leadership”, “guiding” or “leadership” a minimum of 500 times across its 336-page length.

Themes Posed

“Who are the leaders? What do leaders do? What knowledge do leaders possess?” the author questions at the outset, outlining his position, but stopping short to explore “How are leaders?”, themes probably reserved for a follow-up publication.

Otherwise, this book contains a book-shaped hole throughout. It’s an attempt in subtly confrontational self-defense, in coming close without actually saying the real point, jumping nimbly from unresolved issue to unscabbed wound across a collection of graphs, management jargon and digressions about historical figures.

Reading Experience

Engaging with the text is like listening to your loved ones having a mannered but intensely emotional disagreement in the next room while you’re attempting to concentrate on a corporate presentation titled “112 Reasons Why Naturally I Had the Last Laugh”. But it is also impossible to disengage, as Southgate keeps drifting near to an issue you genuinely wish to learn about, before unexpectedly changing tack.

Disclosures

There are inevitably news headlines in publications of this nature, explained by the rapt fascination with the role of England manager. The most striking instances include: he made up his mind he was absolutely going to quit as England manager after spectators tossed cups at him at the tournament; he nearly decided to withdrawing from the game at mid-match against the Bulgarian team in 2019 after his squad members were racially abused; he invented the idea of specialist dead-ball trainers and the entire league in the Premier League is now copying him; he has now abandoned his love for the sport, a shocking admission thrown away in a short passage at the conclusion.

Guiding England through a era of rage, aspiration, turmoil and pandemic restrictions was a harsh journey. The scars are clearly still fresh.

Predictable Elements

Throughout much of the book, the content is saturated with an robotic verbal clutter of commonplace management talk. Copies of this book were distributed with journalists under secrecy pacts ahead of launch, presumably out of concern someone might leak that “tough talks can, by their nature, be challenging”, that you should always think before you act, that leadership takes place where change intersects with compassion.

Sincere Expression

There is however real emotion present. Guiding England through a time of fury, hope, upheaval and confinement was a harsh experience. The scars are evidently still fresh, albeit expressed in a jargon-laden reinterpretation of the traditional coach theme: why I was actually right about each issue from the start.

Specific Examples

The book’s opening passage, disguised as exciting memories of the deciding game of Euro 2024, is completely dedicated to how effective he really was at player changes (the primary common complaint centering on he was not successful at making changes). Later, he explores significant detail about how he oversaw the championship match of 2021 flawlessly – particularly the failed penalty shootout – because he followed a established procedure, which suggests that throwing on youthful talents at the last moment to take the most important kick of their careers was reasonable and right.

That approach was proved right by a successful penalty decider against the Swiss team in a subsequent competition after a game where England spent the entire match looking as if they were trying to put on a jumper the inside out. “Our dominance in that tiebreaker was absolutely exhilarating,” the author states, in between equating the showing to special forces neutralizing a notorious figure. Oh Gareth.

Avoided Revelations

When we approach to a disclosure, he withdraws from specifying people or giving us the juice. We learn there were problematic England players who insisted on more attention, maybe because they were indulged early in their careers. But as you lean forward hopefully, he is already veering off into a topic titled a specific management theory, which claims that instead of a collection of attributes or principles, culture is in fact something that is created by, unfortunately, please, we’ve heard enough.

Highlights

Included in the better sections are when the author discusses about the piecemeal nature of fostering mental toughness in youth, or how he sought to describe national identity more lucidly and more helpfully than any other figure in the spotlight. Best of all, there is a genuinely gripping account of that traumatic evening in the Bulgarian capital where England’s African heritage squad members were viciously abused (and afterwards defended forcefully by their manager).

Genuine Ending

Perhaps the most heartfelt section {comes|arrives|appears