Bayer Leverkusen are second in the Bundesliga, five points ahead of RB Leipzig, who are fourth. Mainz are fifth, level on points with Borussia Dortmund, who complete a competitive, congested top six.

But the hunt for the title or Champions League qualification is not the only thing that binds them. All four clubs are chasing Manchester City’s James McAtee, the latest young English talent eager for the regular showcase that Bundesliga sides can offer. Stuttgart, in 10th position, are also interested in the England Under-21 attacking midfielder.

McAtee favours a move away from City this month after growing frustrated at his lack of playing time for the Premier League champions this season and there is a queue forming for the player.

Clubs from across Europe are hoping to pick up a gifted 22-year-old with huge potential and plenty of resale value for around £20 million to £25 million and, for the moment, it is the Germans who are the front-runners, ahead of Premier League sides such as Fulham, Nottingham Forest, West Ham and Brentford and other suitors in Italy.

As City push for a £50 million deal for the versatile Eintracht Frankfurt forward Omar Marmoush, McAtee could find himself going the other way to Germany and treading the same Bundesliga path that served the likes of Jadon Sancho and Jude Bellingham so well.

German clubs have made a habit in recent years of picking off some of England’s brightest emerging talents desperate for regular minutes and giving them the platform to kick on that their Premier League counterparts cannot always offer or promise.

Sancho left City for Dortmund in an £8 million deal in 2017 and was sold four years, 137 appearances and 50 goals later to Manchester United for £73 million.

Bellingham spurned the advances of United to join Sancho at Dortmund in 2020 for £25 million – a similar fee to the one McAtee may now command – en route to establishing himself as one of Europe’s most coveted young midfielders. An initial £88.5 million move to Real Madrid would follow.

They are footsteps in which McAtee may hope to follow, but are not the only examples that may inform the midfielder’s thinking as he considers his important next career step. McAtee, for example, need only speak to his City team-mate Erling Haaland, who turned down United to join Dortmund, to understand what those three seasons in the Bundesliga did for the Norway striker’s development.

Similarly, Dani Olmo chose Germany and Leipzig in January 2020, aged just 21, as the perfect stepping stone before a return to Barcelona – the club he represented as a youth – last summer on the back of a star turn in Spain’s Euros triumph, coincidentally in Germany.

There are other examples, beyond Sancho and Bellingham, of young English players going to Germany for the kind of opportunities, experience and exposure they might not have got by staying at home.

McAtee’s England Under-21 team-mate Jamie Bynoe-Gittens left City for Dortmund at 16 in 2020. The following year, brothers Felix and Lukas Nmecha quit City for Wolfsburg.

Other English players may not have swapped their homeland for Germany permanently but Callum Hudson-Odoi made 21 appearances on loan at Leverkusen from Chelsea before joining Forest in 2023 and Reiss Nelson scored seven goals in 29 appearances for Hoffenheim on loan from Arsenal during the 2018-19 campaign, aged just 18.

Nelson is now on loan at Fulham with former Arsenal team-mate Emile Smith-Rowe, who also moved to Germany on loan in January 2019, only for a spell with Leipzig to be severely disrupted by injury.

Last July, the official Bundesliga website published an article entitled: “Why the Bundesliga is the best league for young players,” and opportunity will be foremost in McAtee’s mind now as he assesses his options.

He wants to have been playing regularly by the time the Under-21 European Championship in Slovakia comes around in June, when he is expected to start as England’s No 10, and beyond that he has ambitions to represent his country at senior level.

City expected to enter talks over £50m Marmoush signing

Manchester City are preparing an opening offer for Omar Marmoush and will make a deal for the Egypt forward their first priority in the January transfer window.

As reported by Telegraph Sport this week, City have identified the Eintracht Frankfurt player as a target to bolster Pep Guardiola’s front line and a move has been given the green light.

City have yet to make formal contact with Marmoush’s Bundesliga club but talks are likely to start in the next week, with City hoping the 25-year-old will be the first deal to be completes before they look at other areas of Guardiola’s squad.

Eintracht, who signed Marmoush on a free transfer in 2023, are third in the table and competing in the Europa League. They would like to keep Marmoush for the rest of the season and he is valued at around £50 million given his form this season.

City are also in the race for Lens centre-back Abdukodir Khusanov, 20, and French sources are expecting the Uzbekistan centre-back to move this month after he did not play in the Ligue 1 defeat by Toulouse at the weekend.

But Marmoush is thought to be the primary target for the window before strengthening Guardiola’s defence, while a No 6 to cover for Rodri’s absence is also an area they are looking at.

Eintracht would make a huge profit on the player they landed after a spell at Wolfsburg, while the formalities of personal terms would not be expected to be a huge obstacle for a player moving from the Bundesliga to the Premier League.

He has two full seasons left on his current terms and had attracted interest from the likes of Nottingham Forest in previous windows before his stunning first half of the season, when he broke club records, including scoring 11 goals in the first 10 game weeks of the Bundesliga season.