An Exercise in Passive-Aggressive Personal Vindication

This soccer book is oddly tedious, yet strangely irresistible. Even title causes confusion. The Dear England title currently names a popular play, an upcoming TV show, and a national address written by Gareth Southgate in 2021.

This iteration of Dear England is not formally connected to those. It represents an peculiar entry in the Dear England Multiverse, a volume about leadership: a typically dull elite football manager subject that the author adheres to doggedly, employing the words “leader”, “leading” or “leadership” a minimum of 500 times across 336 pages.

Themes Raised

“What are leaders? What is the role of a leader? What knowledge do leaders possess?” Southgate inquires in the opening, outlining his position, but stopping short to address “How are leaders?”, themes probably reserved for a follow-up publication.

Beyond that, this publication features a significant gap in the middle. It’s an exercise in passive-aggressive self-defense, in almost-but-not-quite stating the underlying truth, hopping adeptly from unresolved issue to raw emotion across a assortment of pie charts, corporate platitudes and digressions about historical figures.

Reading Experience

Engaging with the text is like listening to your family members having a mannered but deeply felt debate in the adjacent space while you’re striving to concentrate on a business seminar titled “Numerous Justifications for My Ultimate Victory”. But it is also difficult to put down, as Southgate keeps coming close to a topic you truly desire to hear about, before abruptly veering away.

Insights

There are typically controversial revelations in publications in this genre, such is the rapt obsession with England managerdom. The most striking ones encompass: he decided he was definitely going to quit as England manager after fans tossed containers at him at the tournament; he nearly decided to withdrawing from the game at half-time against the Bulgarian team in 2019 after his players were racially abused; he invented the idea of specialist dead-ball trainers and everyone in the Premier League is now copying him; he has now lost his enthusiasm for football, a startling revelation casually mentioned in a short passage at the end.

Guiding England through a era of fury, aspiration, turmoil and lockdown was a grueling ordeal. The bruises are obviously still unhealed.

Generic Content

Otherwise, the text is flooded with an AI-style word-sludge of commonplace guidance discourse. Review editions of this book were provided with reviewers under non-disclosure agreements prior to release, probably out of concern someone might leak that “difficult conversations can, by their inherent quality, be difficult”, that you should always consider the consequences, that management happens where evolution intersects with empathy.

Sincere Expression

Readers will find nevertheless real emotion present. Leading England through a era of rage, hope, turmoil and lockdown was a brutal experience. The scars are evidently still raw, though conveyed in a terminology-heavy reimagining of the classic coach story: how my decisions were correct about all matters throughout.

Detailed Instances

The publication’s opening passage, Trojan-horsed as thrilling memories of the championship match of the tournament, is all about how good the manager actually was at substitutes (the primary common complaint centering on he wasn’t effective at making changes). Later, he goes into significant detail about how he handled the championship match of 2021 impeccably – particularly the losing penalty shootout – because he adhered to a set protocol, which suggests that throwing on young players very late to take the crucial kick of their existence was logical and correct.

This was confirmed by a victorious shootout against Switzerland in a subsequent competition after a game where England spent 120 minutes looking as if they were attempting to don a sweater the backwards. “Our dominance in that penalty decider was simply exciting,” Southgate notes, while likening the performance to special forces neutralizing Osama bin Laden. Oh Gareth.

Missed Opportunities

On the occasions we approach to a revelation, Southgate backs away from naming names or providing the substance. We discover there were problematic England individuals who insisted on more consideration, maybe because they were indulged during the beginning of their time in football. But as you anticipate eagerly, he is already veering off into a topic titled a specific management theory, which asserts that instead of a collection of characteristics or values, team environment is in fact an element that is developed by, gah, stop, no more.

Strengths

Included in the more compelling bits are when the author explores about the piecemeal nature of developing mental toughness in the next generation, or how he sought to describe Englishness more clearly and more helpfully than any public personality in the limelight. Most impressively, there is a truly gripping account of that harrowing match in Sofia where England’s players of color were viciously abused (and afterwards protected vigorously by their manager).

Sincere Finale

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