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This soccer book is curiously tedious, yet strangely irresistible. Even title is confusing. Dear England currently belongs to a hit play, an future TV show, and a national address penned by the manager in 2021.

This edition of Dear England is not officially tied to those. It stands as an oddity in the Dear England Multiverse, a book about leadership: a typically dull top-level coach subject that the author adheres to persistently, using the words “leadership”, “leading” or “management” no fewer than 500 times across its 336-page length.

Inquiries Explored

“What defines a leader? What actions do leaders take? And what do leaders know?” the author questions in the opening, outlining his position, but stopping short to address “Why are leaders?”, themes likely reserved for a second book.

Otherwise, this publication has a significant gap at its core. It’s a venture in subtly confrontational self-justification, in almost-but-not-quite stating the real point, skipping adeptly from lingering grievance to raw emotion across a assortment of data visualizations, management jargon and references about historical figures.

Reading Experience

Going through the book is like listening to your parents having a mannered but deeply felt argument in the adjacent space while you’re trying to pay attention on a corporate presentation called “112 Reasons Why Naturally I Had the Last Laugh”. But it is also impossible to stop reading, as the author keeps approaching to a topic you truly wish to learn about, before abruptly veering away.

Disclosures

There are inevitably controversial revelations in works of this nature, such is the intense fascination with England managerdom. The best instances include: he resolved he was absolutely going to resign as England manager after spectators hurled cups at him at the European Championship; he almost chose to abandoning the game at half-time against the Bulgarian team in 2019 after his team were targeted with slurs; he invented the approach of set-piece coaches and all teams in the Premier League is now copying him; he has now abandoned his love for soccer, a surprising confession casually mentioned in a brief section at the final part.

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

Predictable Elements

Otherwise, the content is overrun with an computer-generated verbal clutter of standard leadership chat. Review editions of this book were distributed with critics under confidentiality clauses ahead of publication, presumably out of apprehension someone might reveal that “difficult conversations can, by their very essence, be difficult”, that you should always consider the consequences, that management happens where evolution meets empathy.

Genuine Feeling

There is nevertheless genuine feeling within. Leading England through a time of rage, aspiration, turmoil and lockdown was a brutal experience. The scars are obviously still fresh, albeit conveyed in a buzzword-filled reinterpretation of the traditional leader narrative: how my decisions were correct about everything throughout.

Notable Cases

The book’s introductory section, disguised as thrilling recollections of the final of Euro 2024, is completely dedicated to how effective he actually was at tactical substitutions (the primary common complaint being he wasn’t successful at altering the lineup). Further on, he explores extensive analysis about how he oversaw the championship match of 2021 flawlessly – particularly the losing spot-kick decider – because he adhered to a predetermined process, which suggests that throwing on inexperienced squad members very late to take the biggest shot of their lives was reasonable and correct.

That approach was proved right by a successful shootout against the Swiss team four years later after a fixture where England spent 120 minutes looking as if they were attempting to don a sweater the wrong way round. “The control we exerted in that shootout was simply exciting,” the author notes, amid comparing the showing to special forces eliminating a high-profile target. Dear me.

Withheld Details

When we come near to a disclosure, he retreats from specifying people or providing the substance. We learn there were challenging England players who insisted on more consideration, maybe because they were pampered early in their careers. But as you expect expectantly, the author is already veering off into a topic called a specific management theory, which claims that instead of a grouping of attributes or ideals, culture is in fact a phenomenon that is developed by, gah, enough, no more.

Strengths

Within the better parts are when he discusses about the gradual process of fostering resilience in the next generation, or how he tried to describe what it means to be English more coherently and more helpfully than any other figure in the public eye. Best of all, there is a truly compelling description of that distressing evening in Sofia where England’s African heritage squad members were targeted with hatred (and subsequently defended robustly by their coach).

Heartfelt Conclusion

Maybe the most heartfelt section {comes|arrives|appears