The Bundesliga may have overtaken the Premier League in UEFA's five-year rankings, but the coach of Eintracht Frankfurt Armin Veh and general manager of Mainz Christian Heidel fear German football is actually falling further and further behind England.
Their greatest fear is the ramifications of a new lucrative television rights deal which is going to leave not only the Bundesliga in the Premier League's wake in terms of revenue.
The gap, according to Veh, is going to be hard to bridge.
"England are already 20 years ahead of us when it comes to marketing themselves abroad," he said at a round table organised by the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper on Wednesday.
With the anticipated influx of even more money from broadcasters, that is going to leave England in a league of their own when it comes to attracting the most talented footballers in future.
"If somebody like Paul Pogba leaves Juventus, then not even Bayern Munich are going to have a chance to get him," Veh added.
"The same goes for Angel di Maria, if Chelsea or Paris Saint-Germain decide they want him."
Heidel has seen this for himself already this summer, by selling Shinji Okazaki to Leicester City and Sebastian Polter to Queens Park Rangers.
"If an English club calls you, then that's pretty much the deal already done," Heidel said. "They've just got the money.
"We got 60 to 70 percent more than we could have expected on the German market for Polter."
Source: PA
