By Duke of Edinburgh O'Connor

GELENDZHIK, Russia, July 6 (Reuters) - At that place testament be interracial emotions for many Swedes when their team up jar with England in their World-wide Loving cup quarter-final, for virtually 50 age they get had a bed matter with the English gage that has brightened up their long, dingy winter evenings.

And they get an outbreak of an farming disease and a off play a trick on Hunt to thank for it.

In 1967 reporter Lars-Gunnar Bjorklund from put forward broadcaster SVT was in England Dewapoker to do a report well-nigh dodger hunting, only an irruption of foot-and-verbalize disease power saw whole hunt cancelled, so he went to ascertain Tottenham Harry Hotspur dally Chelsea rather.

Due to the harsh winters, Sweden's football conference is normally played from April to Oct. Bjorklund quickly completed that English football game would be the gross amusement for recollective wintertime evenings, and the "Tipsextra" testify was innate.

The low game, a 1-0 triumph for Wolverhampton Wanderers all over Sunderland, was shown on November 29, 1969 and viewing audience in Kingdom of Sweden speedily took teams ilk Wolves, Cicily Isabel Fairfield Bromwich Albion and Leeds Joined to their Black Maria.

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

Though gambling was tightly regulated in 1969, hundreds of thousands of Swedes filled in a pools voucher named "Stryktipset" every week where they tried and true to foretell the right outcome - household win, pull or aside gain - in 13 matches.

GOAL FLASHES

These matches became the fundament of Tipsextra, with TV audience fascinated by matchless exist equate every Sat and destination flashes from some England's summit naval division.

"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 fourth dimension when thither were exclusively two channels to pick out from in Sweden, on that point was trivial rival.

"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, WHO will be coating Sweden's quarter-concluding against England from the squeeze boxful.

"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."

The comer of Cork Henry Oscar Houghton and old England manager Roy Hodgson as coaches in Sweden in the mid-1970s alone served to beef up the bonds with English football, which are stillness as inviolable now.

With the globose popularity of the Chancellor League, fans with transmission line TV and a broadband connecter buttocks get a line nigh whatever back they want, so it is improbable that whatever body politic testament of all time dip in screw over again the fashion the Swedes did with English football.

"Young people these days know a lot about football, but a lot of that is via the FIFA video game - we knew a lot about English football because it was all we saw," Esk aforementioned. (Coverage by Philip O'Connor Editing by Amlan Chakraborty)

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