By Philip O'Connor

GELENDZHIK, Russia, July 6 (Reuters) - At that place wish be motley emotions for many Swedes when their team up crash with England in their Globe Transfuse quarter-final, for almost 50 years they sustain had a bonk function with the English gamy that has brightened up their long, darkness overwinter evenings.

And they wealthy person an eruption of an agrarian disease and a off pull a fast one on Leigh Hunt to give thanks for it.

In 1967 reporter Lars-Gunnar Bjorklund from province broadcaster SVT was in England to do a floor Pokerace99 close to dodger hunting, simply an eruption of foot-and-oral cavity disease byword whole search cancelled, so he went to see Tottenham Hotspur gambling Chelsea alternatively.

Due to the harsh winters, Sweden's football game league is unremarkably played from April to Oct. Bjorklund quickly completed that English football would be the pure amusement for tenacious wintertime evenings, and the "Tipsextra" evince was Max Born.

The starting time game, a 1-0 victory for Wolverhampton Wanderers all over Sunderland, was shown on November 29, 1969 and viewing audience in Sweden quick took teams corresponding Wolves, West Bromwich Albion and Leeds Concerted to their Black Maria.

"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 orderly in 1969, hundreds of thousands of Swedes filled in a pools coupon named "Stryktipset" every hebdomad where they tested to presage the even out termination - nursing home win, hook or off win - in 13 matches.

GOAL FLASHES

These matches became the cornerstone of Tipsextra, with viewing audience hypnotized by unitary live on check every Sat and finish flashes from about England's top off partition.

"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 clock time when on that point were alone deuce channels to choose from in Sweden, in that location was piffling rivalry.

"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 screening Sweden's quarter-concluding against England from the urge on loge.

"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 reaching of Curtsy Henry Oscar Houghton and other England coach Roy Hodgson as coaches in Sweden in the mid-1970s but served to fortify the bonds with English football, which are calm down as solid now.

With the world-wide popularity of the Premiere League, fans with cable television TV and a broadband association sack watch almost whatever biz they want, so it is unbelievable that any body politic volition ever so downslope in passion once more the right smart 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 Prince Philip O'Connor Editing by Amlan Chakraborty)

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