Dan Ashworth, the man plucked from West Bromwich Albion to save English football, has warned the game is at a vital "crossroads". But he claims a combination of the long-delayed £105m national football centre at St George's Park and the Premier League's new £320m elite player performance plan (EPPP) have provided the opportunity to set it on the right path.

"Three months in, I can see the power of this place," Ashworth says of his base at the new national football centre that, having moved from drawing board to reality, will now have to prove it can make a difference in effecting a culture change in English football and catching continental rivals who have forged ahead in developing systems to nurture talented young players.

"It is something everyone has pined for, to have a central base. Literally, in terms of being in the middle of the country, but also to have a home for coach education and for our teams," he says. "However, the newness of the building will wear off. If it's going to have any longevity, then we have to fill it with the right people and the right products."

The FA's director of elite development has also revealed plans to nail down a "footballing philosophy" that will be applied to all of England's representative teams at various levels, in the same way as many Premier League clubs now insist on the same system and ideals being practised at all age groups.

It would run all the way from the senior side returning from Rio to the Under-21 team gathering in Israel for today's opening match of the European Championship. And, from there, to the younger teams who will have to deliver on a promise to lay to rest the ghosts of 1966 that inhabit every corner at St George's Park, with its endless nods to football's heritage, by winning a major trophy in the 2020s.

"As an association and as clubs, we need to pin that down," he told the Guardian in his first newspaper interview in the job. "There are lots of different playing styles within our professional leagues. You've got a vast contrast and you don't have that so much in other nations. I think it's important at some stage that we state what our playing and coaching philosophy is as a country, not necessarily based on what the clubs have."

Squinting across the 12 verdant pitches and past the state-of-the‑art facilities set against the cloudless sky of this corner of the Staffordshire countryside, it is just about possible to buy into the optimism of Ashworth, who has been in his new role for 90 days, and the St George's Park chairman, David Sheepshanks, who deserves the credit for finally getting the impressive facilities near Burton-on-Trent built after years of procrastination.

"Imagine Manchester United or Chelsea or Manchester City or Tottenham operating without a training ground. But we were. We were operating without a home for the 24 national teams," says Sheepshanks, the former Ipswich Town chairman. "But we were also operating without a national home for FA Learning, so courses were being delivered on an itinerant basis all over the country. We now have a home for the England team and a home for our coaches."

And then you recall recent desperate England displays, such as that against the Republic of Ireland at Wembley which provoked Gary Lineker's "dark ages" outburst, and the wealth of German talent on display a few days earlier in a Champions League final that sparked plenty of comment about where their system is going right and where England are going wrong. And the statistics that show only 40% of Premier League players are English, compared with 47% of homegrown players in Germany, or 62% in Spain.

But there is no point, says Ashworth, constantly chasing after an idealised version of what works for others. And while St George's Park should be a physical manifestation of a new mindset that takes off the blinkers and is open to new ideas from around the world and from other sports, he is insistent that English football must forge its own path.

"I'm really cautious of saying: 'We're going to do a Holland, we're going to do a Germany, we're going to do a Spain, we're going to do a France.' If you look at the history – everybody wanted to go to Holland, then everyone wanted to go to Clairefontaine, then Spain, now it's Germany," he says.

"We are England, we are English. We play like England but we take the best bits of other sports, other nations. We'd be blinkered and stupid if we didn't open our eyes to good practice in other nations. But also let's not get away from the good attributes and good assets we have as a nation."

Whereas Germany's revolution was partly sparked by national embarrassment at their poor showing at Euro 2000, it was also born of necessity because their biggest pay TV company collapsed and the bottom fell out of the market so the big clubs were forced to turn to homegrown players. With the Premier League's new £5.5bn TV deal in the bank, that is not likely to happen here anytime soon.

"Our Premier League is the most successful and the best in the world, without a shadow of a doubt. That brings with it one or two other issues regarding opportunities for English players, which the stats bear out. But we've got to find a way around that," he says.

Ashworth concedes that the blockage facing English players at 17 or 18, when they should be competing for a place in the first team, is the single biggest issue they must deal with.

"The money is not going away. Three months ago I was on the other side of the fence. I was technical director at a club that had to find the most cost-effective way of getting a team together to stay in the Premier League. It's a world market now," he says. "That's one thing we have to understand at the FA. Premier League and Football League teams will fish the whole world to get their players. So we have to make sure that our coach education strands, our player development strands, what we do within the national teams is cutting edge – that it will upskill the coaches and upskill the players."

Eight months after the pomp and circumstance of its official unveiling by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, St George's Park – first mooted in 1975 and standing on land purchased in 2001 – is finally starting to come alive. In the cafe, young groups of players (girls and boys) chatter excitedly alongside coaches from around the world who are taking a refresher course ahead of their Uefa A licence exams.

Over the weekend, enough soon-to-be- or recently retired players to fill a punditry sofa several times over were among 60 or so professionals taking their A licence, including Robbie Fowler, Dwight Yorke, Phil Neville, Nigel Clough and Peter Schmeichel.

Outside on the pitches, a Lebanese coach is being watched over by Dennis Mortimer, the former Aston Villa captain who is now an FA National Coach Educator, as he walks York College students through their paces.

Whether or not the model, which involves making enough money from the two on-site hotels and commercial deals to subsidise its operations, works long-term remains to be seen but its enthusiastic managing director, Julie Harrington, insists the omens are good. The last thing the FA, still paying off the debt incurred in rebuilding Wembley at a cost of £757m, needs is another financial millstone. "It's forecast to wash its own face by year four and we're still confident we'll do that," she says.

Sheepshanks insists that the site is neither too remote nor too expensive to train the volume of coaches required to power the required gear change in coaching capability. The FA has promised to train 800 elite-level coaches in its first year.

"All that nonsense about not being next door to Wembley and not being by the M4 corridor, it is smack bang in the middle of the country and it is proving to be accessible," he says. "The number of people choosing St George's Park as their meeting point is huge."

Both Harrington and Sheepshanks use the phrase "neutral ground". The former is impressed by the way in which it has allowed football's habitually warring tribes to lay down their arms and communicate with one another. The Professional Footballers' Association and the League Managers' Association also have permanent bases on the 330-acre site.

"There was a hunger for somewhere for people to come and talk and share ideas," says Harrington, who was recruited from the world of horse racing to run the centre. "The biggest vote of confidence is the fact that outside our own FA business, the biggest customer is the Premier League. They are playing youth festivals and everything out of that youth development review, all the different age groups, are coming here."

Sheepshanks, who last week met the incoming FA chairman, Greg Dyke, says it has provided a place where experts in all football-related fields from around the world can share insight and ideas. "We've had people from all over Europe, all over the world, coming to visit," he says proudly, including delegations from France, Belgium, Germany and Holland.

Another level-headed, if ambitious, character like Ashworth is installed at the Premier League. Ged Roddy has piloted the EPPP, which gives responsibility for the best young players to elite clubs, through the shark‑infested waters of domestic football politics. With this pair in their posts English football has perhaps the best chance in a generation to cure some of its long-standing ills. But some intractable problems remain. Whereas a system such as Germany's balances the needs of the clubs with those of the national team, where divisive issues such as a winter break and player release are concerned the pendulum in England will always gravitate towards the money and power of the Premier League.

Ashworth says: "I think we're at a crossroads. We've got the opening of St George's Park, which is six months in. We've got the EPPP, which is nine months in. We've got a situation where there is a real common thread between the three main bodies in ourselves, the Premier League and the Football League. We're all very keen to invest time, effort and resources into player and coach development and get more homegrown players through. Everybody is on the same page. I'm really optimistic and confident."

In practice, he hopes that will mean better skilled coaches and better skilled players – more confident on the ball, calm under pressure, more prepared to take responsibility. But also clubs and coaches who embrace cutting-edge sports science, psychology and nutrition. "Going through the pro-licence system one of the things you have to do is a study visit. The range of things people have reported on is amazing. Roy Keane did something on the All Blacks," says Ashworth. "People have really tried to think outside the box and look at other sports, other countries, other footballing philosophies. People are more and more trying to work out what we can learn not only from other sports but other industries.

The American sprinter Michael Johnson will begin work with athletes at the medical centre operated by Perform, while Stuart Lancaster's England rugby team has also trained at St George's Park, which has now hosted 20 of England's 24 representative teams.

"Seeing Stuart Pearce and Stuart Lancaster in one of the breakout areas talking about nutrition is fantastic," adds Harrington. "And seeing their medical staff talking to our medical staff about weight training. That can only be a good thing."

Ashworth insists that the blinkered, jobs-for-the-boys attitude that held back English football for so long has gone for good. Sheepshanks, perhaps the only man in modern football who would use the phrase "wet ninny" without irony, promises that the long-delayed revolution is underway.

"We live in a short-term world with AGMs every Saturday. Somebody has to take a long‑term strategic view. The FA has done that here. This is for the long term. We've said that hopefully England's senior men will win a World Cup or a European Championships in the 2020s. In 10 or 14 years' time, is that realistic? The answer is yes."