Discover the Weekend Division Club Boasting Nearly Two Thousand Top-Flight Appearances
What do you enhance a outstanding veteran side who have claimed consecutive championships, featuring a league-cup double with thirty victories from thirty-two matches?
Recruit a collection of former pro players that have played at the top level of club football and global football as you target additional trophies.
One Greater Manchester team fields an non-professional vets team with 9 ex- Premier League players in their active roster.
222 Top Division Goals, Three Hundred Twenty-Five International Appearances
Wythenshawe Veterans Over 35s are based in southern Manchester and compete in the Cheshire-based Vets Division Top Tier.
Their squad list this campaign features nine former Premier League players, with a total over 1,800 elite games.
This high-profile team also contains over 220 top division goals and 325 international appearances.
They include Papiss Cisse, who notched 37 goals in 117 appearances for his former club after moving to them for £9m from German league club Freiburg in 2012.
Cisse made his debut for Wythenshawe in their last home game against reigning title holders their rivals and netted every one of the six scores in a 6-2 victory - featuring a half-hour first-half triple.
The roster for this campaign also includes former professionals such as England and Anfield forward Emile Heskey, Hull and Burnley FC winger George Boyd, Everton forward Oumar Niasse, Wigan Athletic defender Maynor Figueroa, City pair Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and Premier League championship victors Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.
In total, the former top-flight players have won fifteen significant honors and moved for combined transfer fees of around £123 million.
Household Names and Global Players
Stephen Ireland began playing for the side in pre-season this summer through good friend and present team teammate Blake Norton, and the former Republic of Ireland player then asked additional former professionals, who all play in a weekly nine-a-side match, to participate.
Former Senegal striker Oumar Niasse, who scored twelve goals in sixty-five top-flight matches for the Toffees and still attends their home games, also made his debut versus the opposition - who are based in Liverpool and wear an Everton warm-up gear as their uniform.
"A friend Stephen Ireland told me 'join and have a game, it's good fun'," said the striker.
"After that he told me we were facing a side from Liverpool and the surprise I had when I noticed them wearing Everton kits - I thought this is wrong for me!
"When you still love the game and you feel you can still play, anywhere you can play, what are you going to do?
"The spectators who turn up and watch are pleased and to make a day if they watch us competing there and to ask us questions - it's really about the pleasure of us getting somewhere we can enjoy football, with organisation of course."
Such is the strength in depth at the club, he made his debut at defender.
"It's a bit different but then, I enjoy sprinting and just move forward - I'm not defending that much," he added.
"I warn my defender 'I'm not hanging back' and that I'm just going to continue attacking.
"The running is what I'm looking for. It's enjoyable."
Dreamlike' Feeling
Along with the forward's 6 goals on his first game, Stephen Ireland has netted 8 in 3 games for Wythenshawe, while George Boyd hit 5 on his debut match and Lescott, a defender by trade, scored a triple in one game as a striker.
The team are top of the Premier Tier with three victories from 3 and a goal difference of plus nineteen.
Paul Barrow, thirty-eight, who features on the flank for the opposition, faced former Wigan defender Maynor Figueroa on Sunday - and had to tell his young boy who Emile Heskey was.
He has appeared at two World Cups for his country, in as well as featuring in over two hundred Premier League games.
"The news was spreading like a rumor they had all these former top-flight stars," remarked Barrow.
"I felt I was a bit starstruck playing against Figueroa to be honest.
"Also Heskey came on and he's got 60-odd English appearances.
"Our side held our own for a good twenty mins but then we had a player dismissed and it was tough.
"Our group literally haven't stopped talking about it - I was calling my mum and sibling on the journey home.
"They were all really nice, shaking our hands after the game - it was like playing a group of normal fellas.
"Now we are eager for the return fixture."
'We'll Still Win the Title'
Andy Kirby coaches the Collegiate vets team, who won the Top Division championship last season, together with his co-manager.
"We went 1-0 ahead and had a