This spring, the Portuguese will host the World Cup — but only within the language department at UT.

Each April, the Department of Modern Foreign Languages and Literature (MFLL) hosts a miniature World Cup between each of the nine language programs at the university: Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, German, Arabic, Portuguese, Russian, Italian and French.

Three years ago, what began as a soccer tournament within the Italian Club expanded to include the other language programs, and now the UT World Cup is an established tradition.

Laurent Zunino, lecturer in the French Department, has been involved in the World Cup each year and commented on the growing excitement surrounding the games.

“We hear about it for several months before it starts,” Zunino said. “The French won the last two world cups and so now everyone is against the French of course.”

In addition to the spring tournament, the language department also participated in a scrimmage during halftime of a Vols soccer game last year. The head of the athletic department contacted Zunino about bringing players from each country for a round of three vs. three matches during the 15-minute interval between halves.

Renée D’Elia-Zunino, lecturer in the Italian department and moderator in the Italian Club, has also been involved in the World Cup festivities alongside her husband Zunino.

“Instead of offering the usual entertainment of Smokey running around and the band playing and all that, they asked if we would be interested in having our department come along with some players and play a mini game of 15 minutes,” D’Elia-Zunino said. “That’s how the scrimmage intermission came into action.”

The scrimmage led to many more international students attending and generating excitement for the spring World Cup than in years past, so this year the language department will return for another halftime scrimmage this Friday during the Vols game against Ole Miss.

Through the scrimmage, D’Elia-Zunino and Zunino hope to continue building anticipation for this year’s language department World Cup and greater awareness for the international community on campus in general.

“For us it’s a way to promote our department and show that we don’t only teach language, but we also like to do different activities and soccer is just one of them,” Zunino said. “It’s a great way to show that MFLL doesn’t just teach language but also organizes different activities.”

The instructors hope that the World Cup festivities will also promote a greater sense of community within the international community itself as well as the UT community.

“This is a great activity that we propose and it’s also a sort of social integration,” Zunino said. “We have all these people from these different origins coming together and playing soccer, and they can at the same time socialize so it is educational for them.”

D’Elia-Zunino summed it up saying, “All in all, it’s just a nice representation of many languages, many cultures and the world.”