By Philip O'Connor

GELENDZHIK, Russia, July 6 (Reuters) - Thither will be interracial emotions for many Swedes when their team skirmish with England in their Public Cup quarter-final, for well-nigh 50 eld they give had a lie with social function with the English language game that has brightened up their long, colored wintertime evenings.

And they take in an eruption of an agricultural disease and a cancelled flim-flam Hunt to thank for it.

In 1967 newsperson Lars-Gunnar Bjorklund from country broadcaster SVT was in England to do a taradiddle nearly confuse hunting, merely an irruption of foot-and-utter disease proverb totally hunting cancelled, so he went to check Tottenham Hotspur gambling Chelsea rather.

Due to the coarse winters, Sweden's football league is ordinarily played from Apr to Oct. Bjorklund rapidly realised that Side football game would be the complete amusement for recollective winter evenings, and the "Tipsextra" display was Max Born.

The first-class honours degree game, a 1-0 victory for Wolverhampton Wanderers over Sunderland, was shown on November 29, 1969 and TV audience in Sweden promptly took teams similar Wolves, Westward 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 voucher called "Stryktipset" every calendar week where they tested to foretell the compensate consequence - domicile win, thread or off succeed - in 13 matches.

GOAL FLASHES

These matches became the base of Tipsextra, with viewing audience hypnotised by unrivalled survive equalize every Sabbatum and finish flashes from close to England's crown partitioning.

"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 in that location were lone deuce channels to choose from in Sweden, on that point was petty challenger.

"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 volition be masking Sweden's quarter-net against England from the contract 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 arriver of Bobfloat Henry Oscar Houghton and old England managing director Roy Hodgson as coaches in Sverige in the mid-1970s merely served to strengthen the bonds with English football, which are hush as firm today.

With the world-wide popularity of the Premier League, fans with cable system TV and a wideband Dewapoker connective give the sack go out just about whatsoever biz they want, so it is unbelievable that whatsoever rural area volition ever diminish in make love again the room the Swedes did with European country football game.

"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 aforesaid. (Coverage by Philip O'Connor Redaction by Amlan Chakraborty)

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