Stuart McCall believes the drawing of Scotland and England in the same World Cup 2018 qualifying group will give the qualifying process extra 'spark'.

The old rivals were both drawn in Group F for UEFA's World Cup Qualifying preliminary round, bringing plenty of excitement from both sets of fans.

Gordon Strachan's assistant McCall admitted to already marking the fixtures against England down in his calendar.

"It's good that there's a freshness about the group and we avoided teams we've played recently," McCall told the Daily Mail.

"But the England one, for the imagination of everyone, gives it that spark the group needed.

"Malta will be a nice place for punters to visit. We'll probably start looking at the likes of Slovakia's Under-21s because we're talking two years' down the line.

"Your initial reaction is that you're happy to miss France and Italy from the second seeds but, at the moment, I don't know if it's any better having Slovakia.

"Our focus is on the next games against Georgia and Germany because the World Cup qualifiers are so far away. But England coming out of the hat has given everybody something to talk about and something to look forward to."