Southgate meets with Wenger to discuss plans to hold World Cup every two years

The former Arsenal manager, who is FIFA's chief of football development, has been a keen exponent of shaking up the football calendar.

FIFA is holding a feasibility study into shortening the gap between men's and women's World Cups from four to two years, following a request from the Saudi Arabian federation in May which was approved by 166 national associations.

Southgate revealed after England's 4-0 World Cup qualifying win over Andorra on Sunday evening that he had spoken to Wenger about the proposals and that he is open to the possibility - so long as the football calendar does not become overwhelmed.

"I actually met with Arsene a couple of weeks ago, he was meeting a few different coaches so I have a pretty good idea of the proposals," Southgate said.

"I think the whole calendar needs reviewing. 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."

Southgate refused to offer his own opinion on whether he believes the plans would be a success and would like the players themselves to have a say on proposals.

"We keep adding more competitions in and I'm intrigued to see what comes out to allow that space to happen because we can't keep adding onto the workload of the players," he added.

"It was interesting to hear the proposals and I was able to feed back some of my thoughts.

"Without knowing how all that fits together because it's too complex to say it was all positive or I didn't agree with it all.

"There's too many different strands, so there's bits I thought could work, bits I think need more consideration and bits that probably wouldn't work. I'm not certain. I'm not massively pro or negative to the concept, I think it needs a lot more thought.

"I also get it that if you are a player who has an injury for the World Cup, you might only get one opportunity every eight years, and that is really tough. I'm not certain on that side of it.

"The players' unions could gather the thoughts of the players and I just think everybody has to work together on the calendar. It has to be coordinated. If we are looking that far ahead, there is no reason it can't be."

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