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This soccer publication is strangely tedious, yet curiously irresistible. Its title raises questions. Dear England already belongs to a hit play, an future TV show, and a open letter written by Gareth Southgate in 2021.

This version of Dear England is not officially related to any of those. It stands as an oddity in the expanding Dear England universe, a book about guidance: a typically dull top-level coach trope that the author adheres to relentlessly, relying on the words “leadership”, “guiding” or “management” a minimum of 500 times across the book’s entirety.

Questions Posed

“What are leaders? What actions do leaders take? And what do leaders know?” Southgate inquires early on, establishing his position, but declining to ask “How are leaders?”, themes presumably saved for a future volume.

Additionally, this book has a significant gap at its core. It’s an exercise in indirectly hostile self-defense, in almost-but-not-quite stating the actual thing, hopping nimbly from lingering grievance to raw emotion across a collection of data visualizations, management jargon and digressions about 16th-century statesmen.

Immersion

Engaging with the text is like listening to your parents having a mannered but intensely emotional argument in the next room while you’re attempting to pay attention on a corporate presentation called “Numerous Justifications for My Ultimate Victory”. But it is also impossible to stop reading, as Southgate keeps drifting near to something you actually desire to learn about, before suddenly veering away.

Revelations

There are typically attention-grabbing disclosures in publications of this nature, due to the rapt interest with leading the national team. The most notable instances include: he made up his mind he was certainly going to resign as England manager after supporters threw cups at him at the Euros; he came very close to withdrawing from the game at the interval against the Bulgarian team in 2019 after his players were racially abused; he invented the concept of specialist dead-ball trainers and all teams in the English football is now copying him; he has now lost his love for football, a startling revelation briefly included in a short passage at the conclusion.

Managing England through a time of rage, optimism, turmoil and pandemic restrictions was a grueling journey. The wounds are clearly still raw.

Predictable Elements

Otherwise, the text is saturated with an AI-style linguistic mush of generic guidance discourse. Advanced copies of this publication were distributed with reviewers under non-disclosure agreements before launch, presumably out of fear someone might reveal that “tough talks can, by their very essence, be challenging”, that you should always consider the consequences, that guidance happens where change combines with empathy.

Emotional Core

The book contains however authentic emotion here. Leading England through a era of anger, hope, turmoil and pandemic restrictions was a harsh ordeal. The scars are obviously still fresh, even if presented in a buzzword-filled reinvention of the traditional leader story: why I was actually right about everything all along.

Detailed Instances

The publication’s opening passage, presented as thrilling memories of the championship match of Euro 2024, is entirely focused on how effective Southgate actually was at tactical substitutions (the primary criticism of Southgate revolving around he wasn’t effective at altering the lineup). Subsequently, he delves into significant detail about how he managed the Euros final of 2021 perfectly – specifically the losing tiebreaker – because he adhered to a predetermined process, which implies that throwing on youthful talents at the last moment to take the biggest attempt of their lives was logical and right.

This was confirmed by a victorious shootout against Switzerland four years later after a game where England spent the full duration looking as if they were trying to don a sweater the wrong way round. “Our dominance in that shootout was truly exciting,” he states, while equating the performance to elite military units neutralizing a high-profile target. Goodness.

Withheld Details

On the occasions we approach to a disclosure, the manager withdraws from identifying individuals or providing the details. We hear there were difficult England individuals who required more attention, possibly because they were pampered early in their professional journeys. But as you anticipate expectantly, the author is already veering off into something named a specific management theory, which claims that instead of a grouping of characteristics or values, team environment is in fact something that is formed by, unfortunately, enough, no more.

Notable Sections

Within the stronger parts are when Southgate discusses about the gradual method of developing mental toughness in the next generation, or how he attempted to define what it means to be English more coherently and more positively than any public personality in the public eye. Best of all, there is a truly absorbing narrative of that distressing evening in the Bulgarian capital where England’s black players were subjected to vile treatment (and subsequently defended robustly by their leader).

Genuine Ending

Perhaps the most emotional part {comes|arrives|appears