Football team level with the Spanish earlier (6)
I believe the answer is:
eleven
'football team' is the definition.
(I know that football team can be written as eleven)
'level with the spanish earlier' is the wordplay.
'level with' becomes 'even' (synonyms. I am not sure about the 'with' bit.).
'the spanish' becomes 'el' ('the' in Spanish).
'earlier' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'even' put after 'el' is 'ELEVEN'.
(Other definitions for eleven that I've seen before include "Cardinal" , "1 and 1?" , "Players" , "Late" , "Number of pipers piping" .)