Sweden's appreciation of English game goes several decades

Janne Andersson speaks about his long-time admiration of English football

Match preview: Sweden v England

By Alexandra Jonson with Sweden

When Sweden go out to play England in the quarter-finals of the FIFA World Cup™ on Saturday it will be a special match for the Swedes. Firstly, because it will be the first time in 24 years that they have reached this stage of the tournament. But also because of who their opponent is.

In Sweden there is a special relationship to English football that goes back over 50 years. In 1967, Swedish reporter Lars Gunnar-Bjorklund went to England to do a story about fox hunting, but as all hunting got cancelled, he instead went to watch Tottenham Hotspur play Chelsea.

Upon returning back to Sweden, Bjorklund realised that English football could be the perfect entertainment to broadcast on long winter evenings, when the Swedish football league was on a break. As a result, a programme called Tipsextra was created. One of many who followed it was Sweden head coach Janne Andersson.

“I grew up in the 70s with Tipsextra," Andersson said. "At that time it was only one televised match a week and it was on Saturday afternoons and from the English League. Already on the Monday you started to speculate what match it would be and on Tuesday or Wednesday you got to know, then you just looked forward to Saturday.”

The programme made Swedes fall in love with English football and Andersson was no different. “I’ve always been a big fan of English football. I remember Ken Hibbitts's long-range shot for Wolves in the beginning of the 1970s with the orange ball on muddy pitches; it’s what I grew up with. England has become a second country for me, so it’s especially exciting to get to play against England as head coach. It will be fun."