By Duke of Edinburgh O'Connor

GELENDZHIK/SAMARA, Russia, July 6 (Reuters) - On that point testament be miscellaneous emotions for many Swedes when their team up skirmish with England in their World-wide Cup quarter-final, for almost 50 years they get had a jazz intimacy with the English spirited that has brightened up their long, darkness winter evenings.

And they deliver an irruption of an agricultural disease and a off confuse trace to thank for it.

In 1967 newsman Lars-Gunnar Bjorklund from State Department broadcaster SVT was in England to do a account roughly dodger hunting, merely an irruption of foot-and-verbalise disease byword completely hunt cancelled, so he went to observe Tottenham Percy flirt Chelsea alternatively.

Due to the coarse winters, Sweden's football conference is normally played from Apr to October. Bjorklund apace realized that English football would be the perfective amusement for farsighted winter evenings, and the "Tipsextra" usher was born.

The starting time game, a 1-0 triumph for Wolverhampton Wanderers o'er Sunderland, was shown on November 29, 1969 and TV audience in Sverige cursorily took teams the likes of Wolves, Mae West Bromwich Albion and Leeds Conjunctive to their hearts.

"That was the only football you could see, so that's why it became so strong," sports editorialist Johan Esk of the Dagens Nyheter paper told Reuters.

Though gambling was tightly regulated in 1969, hundreds of thousands of Swedes filled in a pools coupon called "Stryktipset" every hebdomad where they well-tried to foretell the compensate event - home win, pull or gone deliver the goods - in 13 matches.

GOAL FLASHES

These matches became the cornerstone of Tipsextra, with viewers fascinated by unrivaled alive fit every Sabbatum and destination flashes from more or PokerQQ less England's whirligig segmentation.

"Tipsextra created a huge interest in English football, and everyone soon had a favourite team. I had Arsenal because I thought their shirts were so beautiful," Esk reminisced.

At a metre when in that respect were alone two channels to choose from in Sweden, thither was small contention.

"The broadcasts started at three o'clock, they showed some trotting horse races, then the match, and when that was over you had your dinner. That was it, every Saturday," says Esk, World Health Organization will be application Sweden's quarter-last against England from the iron box.

"Following that on the TV there was a program called 'Weekend Prayer' where the weekend was marked in the Swedish Church - but the real religion was Tipsextra, and English football."

Swedish knob Janne Andersson radius on Fri of observance 'Tipsextra' organic process up in the 1970s and aforementioned the English game had a boastfully wallop on him.

"I was always a huge fan of English football," Andersson said in Samara, where Sweden look England on Saturday.

"I remember the muddy pitches and watching all of this. I grew up with this. England was really my second nation as it were.

"So it is a wonderful feeling to be faced with England now as the drumhead carriage of the Swedish team. We are looking ahead to it."

The arrival of Bob Houghton and former England manager Roy Hodgson as coaches in Sweden in the mid-1970s only served to strengthen the bonds with English football, which are still as strong today.

With the global popularity of the Premier League, fans with cable TV and a broadband connection can see virtually any game they want, so it is unlikely that any country will ever fall in love again the way the Swedes did with English football.

"Young the great unwashed these years have sex a muckle just about football, merely a mass of that is via the FIFA picture mettlesome - we knew a slew some English language football game because it was whole we saw," Esk said. (Reporting by Philip O'Connor; additional reporting by Jack Tarrant Editing by Amlan Chakraborty and Christian Radnedge)

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