The World Cup will surely come too soon for Gareth Southgate’s young squad, but England’s golden generation of teenagers have already conquered the world.

Tonight, England’s Under-21s play Qatar in the Toulon Tournament, where they are aiming to win for a third successive summer - part of a wider pattern of English success at youth level.

Last summer England swept the board at under-age tournaments, also winning the U17 and U20 World Cups - their first World Cup wins at any level since 1966 - and the U19 European Championship. They reached the semi-final of the U21 Euros and the final of the U17s Euros, losing both on penalties.

Kenny Swain, England’s former U16 coach who is now a youth development consultant for the Premier League, is among those who believe this country’s teenagers are the best in the world and “the best we’ve ever had”.

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But England’s golden generation is in danger of becoming a lost generation for Premier League clubs, as an increasing number move to Germany’s Bundesliga in search of first-team football.

Jadon Sancho, part of the U17 World Cup squad, has broken into Borussia Dortmund’s team since joining from Manchester City last summer and Ademola Lookman, 20, impressed at RB Leipzig after joining on loan from Everton in January.

English youngsters Kaylen Hinds, Danny Collinge, Denzeil Boadu, Jordan Brown and Austria-born Kevin Danso, who lived in England from the age of six, have made lower-profile moves to Germany.

Borussia Monchengladbach have signed England youth internationals Mandela Egbo, Keanan Bennetts and Reece Oxford, the latter on loan, and they angered Liverpool last month by trying to poach Rhian Brewster, who was top scorer at the U17 World Cup.

Sources within the game expect the trend to continue, saying it is increasingly benefitting all parties.

For the players, the gambles are paying off. With less money comes less pressure and Bundesliga bosses are more willing to blood youth than their Premier League counterparts, who are never more than two or three bad results away from scrutiny. This season, 15 players aged 18 or under appeared in the Premier League, compared to 25 in the Bundesliga.

Sancho and Lookman were both mentioned as potential wildcards for Southgate’s World Cup squad - unthinkable if they had remained at home - and Danso, 19, is now an Augsburg starter and senior Austria international.

It is easy to understand why Brewster, who is without a Premier League appearance, is attracted to Gladbach given the talent ahead of him at Liverpool.

“It can only benefit them,” Swain told Standard Sport. “It will build confidence - not only as a footballerer but as a young person in a different culture - in a highly competitive industry.”

For German clubs, the deals make perfect sense - on and off the pitch. English youngsters are both talented and a sound financial investment. So great is the Premier League’s spending power, every foreign club in Europe wants to sell to England and successful Englishmen are likely to return home eventually.

“Their motive is potential. Dortmund clearly think Sancho has potential,” said Swain. “If he realises that potential, that will be reflected in his financial value and if an English club comes along, they’re going to make a lot of money.”

If Sancho, 18, wants to return to England in the future, Dortmund will hope to recoup nearer £100m than the £8m they paid City, while Augsburg would rather sell Danso to a small Premier League club like Brighton than a big club in Holland or France.

Bayern Munich set the blueprint with Owen Hargreaves, blooding the England international before selling him to Manchester United for £17m in 2007, and since the new Premier League broadcast deal, it has never been more lucrative for foreign clubs to gamble on English youth. English clubs are realising the benefit of allowing young players to move overseas, too.

None want to lose their best young players but some are taking a pragmatic approach to selling talent to the Bundesliga, inserting sell-on and buy-back clauses in the deals to ensure they benefit from any future success.

For the Premier League’s top clubs, where short-termism reigns and more than 70 per cent of the stars are from overseas, it makes sense to transfer risk to German clubs, for a price, safe in the knowledge that they have the financial clout to buy the players back.

Hopefully, the biggest winners will be the England senior team. Rather than stagnating in the reserves, most players who have taken the plunge are thriving away from the Premier League bubble of insularity and the club rivalries that, according to many, contributed to the failure of the last golden generation.