Germany’s general manager, Oliver Bierhoff, has admitted England’s progress at youth level is a concern for his country but expects a new academy in Frankfurt to help the world champions to stay ahead of the competition.

As England and Germany begin their preparations for next year’s World Cup with Friday’s friendly at Wembley, Bierhoff believes the fact that England this year became under-17 and under-20 world champions shows St George’s Park is having a positive effect and Germany cannot afford to rest on their laurels.

“Thinking about the England [senior] team from the outside, you are starting to create an air of ‘this is a new team’ with young players and a lot of characters and by retiring older players who did a lot,” said Bierhoff. “There’s a change and I can see you have confidence from the U20s and U17s. That shows English football also has developed ... It takes some time and you see small steps of success in the youth teams. We often see that we have successful youth team players who become important in the future. Yes, we are worried [about England] because the quality of the players will become better.

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“I am sure that with St George’s Park, with the investment, coaches and education, that you are catching up,” Bierhoff added. “It takes some time. We started in 2000 and the first result was in 2010 with new young talented players.”

Bierhoff said that Germany are on course to avoid the mistakes of the past, when success made the country’s football authorities “a little bit lazy” when it came to player development. He is involved in the planning for a new German national academy, which is scheduled to be ready by 2020. He describes it as “a little university” that will harness new technology – such as virtual reality – to improve young players’ perception and instincts as well as their skills.

“[It] is not a normal academy,” he said. “It’s not only about education but innovation and development. We will have a think-tank there and a tech lab. We will be more compact [than St George’s Park], a little university. From what I have seen at St George’s Park, it’s huge.

“I believe ours will be more like a laboratory. We want to have a Silicon Valley or Harvard for football where the best people come together and tackle the big issues. We have been to Silicon Valley and the Max Planck Institute in Berlin. I use the example of Formula One – the technology they develop you find in a small Mercedes C-Class. But you develop it in F1.”

Bierhoff believes that Germany has to rely on smartness to offset the financial power of the Premier League, which enables English clubs to lure away top young talents. “We feel that England, because of the amount of money you have with TV rights, young talented players like Leroy Sané and [Schalke’s] Leon Goretzka are moving to England [or to another country] and this is not good for our league but also for the quality of our game. We have to pay attention and invest again and again in the education of our coaches.”