An Exercise in Passive-Aggressive Self-Defense
The football book is strangely tedious, yet curiously captivating. Its title raises questions. The Dear England title currently is used by a successful play, an forthcoming television program, and a open letter written by the manager in 2021.
This iteration of Dear England is not officially connected to any of those. It stands as an anomaly in the Dear England Multiverse, a book about management: a typically uninspiring elite football manager trope that Southgate adheres to doggedly, relying on the words “leadership”, “leading” or “management” a minimum of 500 times across its 336-page length.
Questions Raised
“What defines a leader? What do leaders do? What knowledge do leaders possess?” Southgate inquires in the opening, setting out his stall, but declining to ask “When are leaders?”, topics presumably reserved for a follow-up publication.
Additionally, this publication contains a notable absence throughout. It’s an attempt in subtly confrontational personal vindication, in nearly but not entirely saying the underlying truth, skipping skillfully from unresolved issue to unscabbed wound across a series of graphs, business clichés and references about 16th-century statesmen.
Immersion
Reading it is like listening to your parents having a controlled but profoundly personal debate in the adjacent space while you’re trying to pay attention on a professional workshop called “112 Reasons Why Naturally I Had the Last Laugh”. But it is also difficult to put down, as Southgate keeps coming close to a topic you truly want to hear about, before abruptly shifting focus.
Insights
The book contains inevitably news headlines in books in this genre, such is the rapt interest with England managerdom. The most striking instances are: Southgate resolved he was certainly going to step down as England manager after spectators hurled beer glasses at him at the tournament; he came very close to abandoning the game at the interval against the Bulgarian team in 2019 after his squad members were subjected to racism; he invented the idea of specialist dead-ball trainers and everyone in the English football is now following his lead; he has now lost his enthusiasm for football, a surprising confession briefly included in a single paragraph at the final part.
Guiding England through a era of fury, hope, political ferment and lockdown was a brutal experience. The wounds are obviously still unhealed.
Generic Content
Throughout much of the book, the narrative is overrun with an AI-style linguistic mush of generic management talk. Review editions of this publication were distributed with reviewers under confidentiality clauses prior to launch, presumably out of apprehension someone might leak that “difficult conversations can, by their inherent quality, be challenging”, that you should always think before you act, that leadership occurs where evolution meets empathy.
Emotional Core
Readers will find however authentic sentiment within. Managing England through a time of anger, hope, turmoil and lockdown was a harsh journey. The bruises are obviously still raw, even if conveyed in a terminology-heavy reimagining of the traditional coach story: demonstrating my accuracy about everything throughout.
Detailed Instances
Even publication’s initial chapter, Trojan-horsed as gripping accounts of the deciding game of the European Championship, is completely dedicated to how effective Southgate actually was at substitutes (the big Southgate gripe being he wasn’t effective at making changes). Later, he delves into extensive analysis about how he handled the championship match of 2021 impeccably – particularly the failed penalty shootout – because he adhered to a predetermined process, which must mean that introducing young players at the last moment to take the crucial attempt of their careers was logical and accurate.
That approach was confirmed by a winning penalty decider against the Swiss team four years later after a match where England spent the full duration looking as if they were attempting to wear a pullover the backwards. “The control we exerted in that tiebreaker was absolutely exciting,” the author states, while comparing the performance to elite military units eliminating Osama bin Laden. Dear me.
Missed Opportunities
On the occasions we come near to a revelation, Southgate retreats from naming names or sharing the details. We discover there were difficult England players who demanded more consideration, possibly because they were indulged at the start of their time in football. But as you anticipate hopefully, he is already diverting into an area called a leadership concept, which states that rather than a grouping of qualities or ideals, culture is in fact a phenomenon that is formed by, gah, stop, we’ve heard enough.
Highlights
Within the better sections are when Southgate writes about the gradual method of fostering mental toughness in youth, or how he sought to define Englishness more clearly and more positively than any other figure in the public eye. Best of all, there is a really absorbing account of that distressing match in Sofia where England’s players of color were viciously abused (and subsequently defended forcefully by their manager).
Heartfelt Conclusion
Perhaps the most emotional part {comes|arrives|appears
