Which Language's Native Speakers Could Form The Best Soccer Team?

Matthew Zeitlin asked an intriguing question on Twitter today that we’ve been arguing about for a while.

The answer is Spanish and it’s not even close—Spain’s current national team plus Messi would be damn near unbeatable, and that doesn’t even include players like Luis Suarez (Uruguay), Alexis Sanchez (Chile), Hirving Lozano (Mexico), or Sergio Agüero (Argentina)—but the question did give rise to a different one: Would an all-Spanish-speaking starting XI be better than a starting XI from all the other languages combined? How many languages would it take to best Spanish?

French (France, plus central and west African nations), and Portuguese (Brazil and Portugal) could certainly give Spanish a run for its money. German and Portuguese might be enough to do it, too. All the other languages combined would obviously yield a deeper pool of players to choose from, but if you wanted to construct the best possible 11-man starting lineup or 23-man roster, it’s hard to think of any two (or three) countries that could combine to pull together more world-class players than the world’s Spanish speaking countries.

So, please, hit us with your non-Spanish-speaking world 23 in the comments.