Discover the Weekend League Squad With Over 1,800 English Top Division Matches
How do you enhance a outstanding veteran team who have won back-to-back titles, featuring a double triumph boasting 30 wins from 32 games?
Recruit a raft of ex- professionals who have played at the top tier of club and global soccer as you pursue more honors.
A Manchester team has an amateur veterans squad with 9 ex- Premier League players in their current roster.
Two Hundred Twenty-Two Top Division Goals, Three Hundred Twenty-Five Global Caps
The team Veterans Over 35s are based in south the city and compete in the Cheshire-based Vets Division Top Division.
The lineup this campaign boasts 9 former top-flight footballers, with a collective nearly 1,800 Premier League matches.
This elite squad also contains 222 Premier League scores and 325 global caps.
The squad include Papiss Cisse, who notched thirty-seven scores in over 100 appearances for Newcastle United after moving to them for £9m from German league club Freiburg in 2012.
Cisse made his debut for the team in their last home match versus defending champions Collegiate Old Boys and netted all six scores in a six-two win - including a half-hour first-half triple.
The team for this season also features ex- professionals such as England and Liverpool striker Emile Heskey, Hull and Burnley FC midfielder George Boyd, Everton forward Oumar Niasse, Wigan Athletic full-back Maynor Figueroa, Manchester City duo Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and top-flight title winners Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.
Together, the ex- top-flight players have claimed fifteen big honors and transferred for total transfer fees of around £123 million.
Famous Figures and International Players
Ireland started playing for the team during preseason this season through good friend and current team player Blake Norton, and the ex- Irish player then asked other former professionals, who all compete in a weekly nine-a-side game, to join in.
Ex- Senegalese striker Niasse, who netted twelve goals in sixty-five top-flight games for Everton and still goes to their matches at Goodison Park, also made his first appearance against the opposition - who are located in the city and use an Blue warm-up gear as their uniform.
"A friend Stephen said 'come and have a game, it's good fun'," commented the striker.
"After that he informed me we were playing a side from the city and the surprise I had when I noticed them wearing Everton shirts - I thought this is strange for me!
"If you still enjoy football and you know you can still play, anywhere you can kick a ball, what are you going to do?
"The people who turn up and see are happy and to give someone's moment if they watch us competing there and to pose us questions - it's really about the pleasure of us getting somewhere we can play, with organisation of course."
So great is the strength in depth at Wythenshawe, he made his first game at defender.
"It's a little unusual but then, I love sprinting and just move forward - I'm not defending that much," he said.
"I tell my defender 'I'm not hanging back' and that I'm just going to continue running.
"That movement is what I'm seeking. It's good fun."
Unreal Feeling
Along with Cisse's six goals on his first game, Ireland has scored eight in 3 games for Wythenshawe, while George Boyd scored five on his first appearance and Joleon Lescott, a centre-half by position, notched a triple in one game up front.
Wythenshawe are top of the Premier Tier with 3 wins from three and a GD of +19.
Paul Barrow, thirty-eight, who plays on the flank for the opposition, faced ex- Latics defender Maynor Figueroa on the weekend - and had to explain his young son who Emile Heskey was.
He has appeared at 2 global tournaments for Honduras, in addition to playing in more than two hundred top-flight matches.
"It was spreading like a rumor they had all these ex-Premier League stars," remarked Barrow.
"I think I was a bit awestruck facing him to be honest.
"Also Emile [Heskey] came on and he's got 60-odd English caps.
"We held our own for a good 20 mins but then we had a player sent off and it was tough.
"We literally haven't stopped talking about it - I was phoning my mum and sibling on the way home.
"They were all really nice, shaking our hands after the match - it was like playing a bunch of regular guys.
"Now we can't wait for the return fixture."
'We'll Still Take the Title'
Andy Kirby coaches the opposition veterans side, who won the Premier Division title last season, along with his co-manager.
"Our team scored one-nil up and had a