NATIONS - Southgate on World Cup every two years: "I am open minded"

Gareth Southgate, the England manager, says he is "open-minded" to having the World Cup every two years and has discussed the idea with Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger.

This comes after Wenger, who is now the head of development at FIFA, advocated for the World Cup to be become a biannual tournament.

After England's 4-0 World Cup qualifying success over Andorra on Sunday, Southgate stated that he has spoken with the Frenchman about the suggestions and that he is open to the idea - as long as the football calendar does not become overcrowded.

"I think the whole calendar needs reviewing," he said. "My feedback would be - I don't know how our generation are going to find a World Cup every two years a strange concept.

"But I also know that things like The Hundred in cricket have been an incredible success, so I'm open-minded about some of those things. But the calendar generally needs to be tidied up. We can't keep adding more things in.

"I agree generally with the concept of better-quality matches - fewer matches, better quality across the board, but there's lots of other things that need consideration and we can't just add more in at the moment."