Dan Ashworth, the Football Association's new director of elite development, believes it may take 15 years to develop an England team good enough to win the World Cup or European Championship.

Ashworth's comments come as Sir Bobby Charlton, a member of the triumphant 1966 World Cup team, admitted he is fearful regarding whether England will ever win the tournament again.

Ashworth, who took up his role at the start of last month after joining from West Bromwich Albion, is based at St George's Park, where he will oversee the Elite Player Performance Plan with particular regard to the education of coaches.

EPPP is the Premier League's initiative to develop more English players by increasing their coaching time at youth level and allowing them to move more easily between clubs, with a view to increasing their quota in the Premier League. Currently only 38% of footballers at Premier League clubs are English.

Asked if it may take longer than a decade for his work to bear fruit, as the training of coaches may take five years alone, Ashworth told the Soccerex forum: "You're right. [They] then start coaching the eight- and nine-years-old and you're then 15 years away from them [feeling the benefit].

"However, I would say we're not starting from scratch here. A lot of wonderful work's been going on with the coaches, the clubs. [If you] talk to Uefa about our A Licence, our Pro Licence – they're called Uefa A and Uefa Pro because they have quality control on it – the standards of our awards are right up there.

"Make no bones about it, there are no quick fixes in youth. It's all about building an education to get them through. My vision is to build on the good work that's been done [and to take] the opportunity St George's Park gives to allow us to bring more of a club focus, a DNA into everything we do."

Ashworth acknowledges that next season's £5bn television deal makes it even more difficult for English players to break into the Premier League first teams. "The amount of revenue generated by the Premier League is not something we can control," he said. "What we can control is getting into a situation where we maximise the contact time we have with the young players. Our job at the Football Association, the Football League and the Premier League is to make sure that our own home-grown players are at a world-class level to get into a world-class league."

Ashworth believes that, despite young English footballers having to be loaned to Championship clubs, the second tier can provide a grounding to develop them into players who can challenge for the World Cup.

"Compared to some of the other leagues – the Dutch league, the Belgian league and so on – I would say it is comparable with that," he said. "But, yes, I take your point, the Premier League is the wealthiest league in the world and therefore [clubs] are able to have a chequebook philosophy and write a cheque and have a here-and-now solution, and it is an issue and it is a problem."

Regarding England's chances of winning the World Cup again, Charlton said: "When people ask me, I feel obliged to say England can win the World Cup, but it's a fool's errand. If all the spaces at clubs are taken up by foreign players, we are not going to have a chance.

"It is hard to think we can win a World Cup now with all the quality out there. But we are trying to give ourselves a chance. It's a slight chance, but we won't be favourites for a while."