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This soccer book is curiously dull, yet strangely irresistible. Its title raises questions. Dear England currently belongs to a hit theatrical production, an upcoming TV show, and a public letter penned by Gareth Southgate in 2021.

This iteration of Dear England is not formally connected to any of those. It represents an peculiar entry in the Dear England Multiverse, a volume about leadership: a typically uninspiring top-level coach subject that Southgate follows relentlessly, relying on the words “leader”, “leading” or “leadership” a minimum of 500 times across its 336-page length.

Themes Raised

“What defines a leader? What is the role of a leader? What insights do leaders have?” he asks at the outset, establishing his position, but stopping short to ask “Why are leaders?”, questions probably reserved for a follow-up publication.

Beyond that, this publication has a significant gap throughout. It’s a venture in indirectly hostile self-justification, in coming close without actually expressing the real point, skipping nimbly from lingering grievance to raw emotion across a collection of pie charts, business clichés and discussions about Thomas Cromwell.

Reading Experience

Engaging with the text is like eavesdropping on your parents having a polite but profoundly personal argument in the next room while you’re trying to concentrate on a business seminar titled “112 Reasons Why Naturally I Had the Last Laugh”. But it is also impossible to stop reading, as Southgate keeps drifting near to a topic you genuinely want to discover, before suddenly changing tack.

Disclosures

The book contains inevitably controversial revelations in books of this nature, due to the rapt fascination with the role of England manager. The most striking examples are: Southgate resolved he was definitely going to resign as England manager after supporters hurled cups at him at the tournament; he almost chose to withdrawing from the game at half-time against the Bulgarian team in 2019 after his team were targeted with slurs; he pioneered the idea of dedicated restart experts and all teams in the top division is now copying him; he has now lost his enthusiasm for the sport, a startling revelation thrown away in a short passage at the end.

Guiding England through a time of rage, optimism, political ferment and confinement was a grueling ordeal. The scars are clearly still raw.

Commonplace Material

In other sections, the text is overrun with an AI-style verbal clutter of commonplace leadership chat. Advanced copies of this book were provided with critics under non-disclosure agreements prior to publication, probably out of concern someone might disclose that “difficult conversations can, by their inherent quality, be challenging”, that you should always look before you leap, that management happens where evolution combines with understanding.

Emotional Core

The book contains nonetheless genuine feeling here. Guiding England through a era of anger, optimism, upheaval and pandemic restrictions was a harsh ordeal. The wounds are obviously still raw, though conveyed in a terminology-heavy reimagining of the classic coach narrative: why I was actually right about everything all along.

Detailed Instances

The book’s opening passage, Trojan-horsed as gripping recollections of the final of Euro 2024, is completely dedicated to how successful he really was at substitutes (the big criticism of Southgate centering on he wasn’t effective at altering the lineup). Later, he explores great depth about how he handled the Euros final of 2021 flawlessly – particularly the unsuccessful spot-kick decider – because he adhered to a predetermined process, which suggests that introducing young players in the closing stages to take the crucial shot of their existence was sensible and right.

That approach was proved right by a winning penalty decider against Switzerland in a subsequent competition after a fixture where England spent the entire match looking as if they were trying to don a sweater the wrong way round. “The control we exerted in that penalty decider was absolutely thrilling,” Southgate writes, while equating the display to special forces eliminating a high-profile target. Dear me.

Avoided Revelations

When we do get close to a disclosure, Southgate backs away from naming names or sharing the details. We discover there were difficult England individuals who required more consideration, possibly because they were pampered during the beginning of their careers. But as you lean forward expectantly, Southgate is already shifting into a topic titled a leadership concept, which asserts that instead of a grouping of characteristics or values, culture is in fact something that is developed by, unfortunately, please, no more.

Highlights

Included in the better parts are when the author writes about the incremental method of developing resilience in youth, or how he attempted to define Englishness more clearly and more constructively than any other figure in the spotlight. The standout section, there is a really compelling narrative of that distressing match in the Bulgarian capital where England’s African heritage squad members were viciously abused (and afterwards protected forcefully by their manager).

Sincere Finale

Perhaps the most emotional part {comes|arrives|appears