Meet this Weekend Division Club Featuring Nearly Two Thousand Premier League Matches
How do you boost a stellar veteran side who have secured consecutive titles, including a double triumph with thirty wins from thirty-two matches?
Sign a collection of former professionals that have performed at the elite level of club and global soccer as you target more trophies.
A Greater Manchester team has an amateur vets team with 9 former top-flight footballers in their present squad.
Two Hundred Twenty-Two Top Division Scores, Three Hundred Twenty-Five Global Caps
Wythenshawe Veterans Over-35s are located in south Manchester and play in the Cheshire Vets League Premier Division.
The squad list this season features 9 former top-flight footballers, with a combined nearly 1,800 top-flight games.
The high-profile roster also boasts over 220 top division scores and 325 international caps.
They include Papiss Cisse, who notched 37 goals in over 100 games for Newcastle United after joining them for £9m from German league club SC Freiburg in January 2012.
He made his debut for Wythenshawe in their last home game against defending title holders their rivals and scored all six goals in a six-two win - featuring a 32-minute first-half hat-trick.
The team for this campaign also features ex- professionals such as England and Anfield striker Emile Heskey, Hull City and Burnley winger George Boyd, Everton striker Oumar Niasse, Wigan full-back Maynor Figueroa, Manchester City pair Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and Premier League championship victors Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.
Together, the ex- top-flight players have won 15 big trophies and moved for total transfer fees of about £123m.
Well-Known Names and International Players
Ireland began playing for the team during pre-season this season through good friend and current Wythenshawe player Blake Norton, and the ex- Irish player then invited other former professionals, who all compete in a weekly nine-a-side match, to participate.
Former Senegal forward Niasse, who scored 12 scores in sixty-five Premier League games for Everton and even now attends their matches at Goodison Park, also had his first appearance against the opposition - who are located in the city and wear an Everton training kit as their uniform.
"My mate Stephen Ireland said 'join and play, it's good fun'," said the striker.
"After that he informed me we were playing a side from Liverpool and the shock I had when I saw them sporting Everton shirts - I say this is wrong for me!
"If you still enjoy football and you feel you can still play, wherever you can play, what are you going to do?
"Those spectators who turn up and watch are happy and to make a moment if they see us competing there and to pose us questions - it's more like the joy of us having somewhere we can play, with organisation of course."
Such is the squad depth at Wythenshawe, Niasse had his first game at full-back.
"That's a little different but then, I love sprinting and just move forward - I'm not staying back that much," he said.
"I warn my defender 'I'm not hanging back' and that I'm just going to keep running.
"The movement is what I'm seeking. It's enjoyable."
Unreal Scenario
In addition to the forward's 6 scores on debut, Stephen Ireland has scored 8 in 3 games for Wythenshawe, while George Boyd hit five on his first match and Joleon Lescott, a defender by trade, notched a triple in one game up front.
The team are leading of the Top Tier with 3 wins from three and a goal difference of plus nineteen.
Paul Barrow, thirty-eight, who plays on the flank for the opposition, faced former Latics full-back Maynor Figueroa on the weekend - and had to tell his nine-year-old son who Emile Heskey was.
Figueroa has played at 2 World Cups for his country, in as well as featuring in more than 200 Premier League games.
"It was spreading like wildfire they had all these ex-Premier League stars," said Barrow.
"I felt I was a bit awestruck facing Figueroa to be honest.
"Even Heskey got on and he's got over 60 England appearances.
"We competed well for a good 20 mins but then we had a player dismissed and it was tough.
"We literally haven't ceased talking about it - I was calling my mum and brother on the way home.
"The opponents were all dead sound, shaking our hands after the game - it was like playing a group of regular fellas.
"Now we are eager for the return match."
'We'll Still Win the League'
The manager manages the Collegiate vets team, who secured the Top Division championship last season, along with his co-manager.
"Our team went one-nil ahead and had a