Meet the Sunday League Team With Nearly Two Thousand Premier League Appearances
How do you enhance a excellent veteran squad who have secured consecutive titles, featuring a league-cup double boasting 30 wins from thirty-two matches?
Sign a raft of ex- professionals who have competed at the top level of club football and international football as you pursue further honors.
A Greater Manchester side boasts an amateur veterans squad with nine ex- top-flight footballers in their present roster.
222 Top Division Scores, Three Hundred Twenty-Five International Caps
The team Vets Over-35s are situated in southern Manchester and play in the Cheshire-based Veterans League Premier Division.
The squad list this season includes 9 ex- top-flight players, with a collective nearly 1,800 Premier League matches.
This elite roster also contains 222 top division goals and 325 global appearances.
The squad feature Papiss Cisse, who netted thirty-seven scores in 117 appearances for Newcastle United after signing for them for £9m from German league side Freiburg in 2012.
He had his first appearance for Wythenshawe in their last home match versus reigning title holders their rivals and netted all six scores in a 6-2 win - including a half-hour first-half hat-trick.
The roster for this campaign also features ex- pros such as English and Anfield forward Emile Heskey, Hull and Burnley FC midfielder George Boyd, Toffees striker Oumar Niasse, Wigan Athletic defender Maynor Figueroa, Manchester City duo Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and top-flight title winners Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.
Together, the former Premier League footballers have won 15 big trophies and moved for total transfer sums of approximately £123m.
Household Figures and International Stars
Stephen Ireland began turning out for the team during preseason this summer through close mate and present Wythenshawe player Blake Norton, and the ex- Irish midfielder then invited additional ex-pros, who all compete in a midweek small-sided game, to participate.
Former Senegalese striker Niasse, who netted twelve scores in 65 Premier League games for Everton and even now goes to their home games, also had his debut against Collegiate OB - who are based in the city and use an Everton warm-up gear as their strip.
"My friend Stephen told me 'join and play, it's good fun'," said the striker.
"Then he informed me we were facing a team from Liverpool and the shock I had when I noticed them sporting Blue kits - I thought this is wrong for me!
"When you still enjoy football and you feel you can still do it, anywhere you can kick a ball, what are you going to choose?
"Those people who turn up and see are happy and to give someone's moment if they see us competing there and to pose us questions - it's really about the joy of us having a place we can play, with structure of course."
So great is the squad depth at Wythenshawe, Niasse made his debut at full-back.
"It's a little different but then, I love sprinting and just move forward - I'm not defending that much," he said.
"I tell my centre-back 'I'm not staying' and that I'm just going to continue attacking.
"That running is what I'm after. It's enjoyable."
Unreal Experience
Along with the forward's 6 goals on his first game, Ireland has netted eight in 3 appearances for the side, while George Boyd scored five on his debut appearance and Lescott, a centre-half by position, notched a hat-trick in one match up front.
The team are leading of the Top Tier with three victories from 3 and a GD of plus nineteen.
Paul Barrow, thirty-eight, who features on the flank for Collegiate OB, faced former Wigan full-back Maynor Figueroa on the weekend - and had to explain his nine-year-old boy who Heskey was.
He has played at two global tournaments for Honduras, in as well as playing in over two hundred top-flight games.
"It was going round like wildfire they had these ex-Premier League stars," said Barrow.
"I think I was a little awestruck facing him to be honest.
"Even Heskey came on and he's has 60-odd England caps.
"We competed well for a good 20 minutes but then we had a man sent off and it was hard.
"Our group really haven't stopped talking about it - I was calling my mum and brother on the way home.
"They were all really nice, shaking our hands after the game - it was like facing a group of normal fellas.
"Now we can't wait for the second match."
We Will Still Take the League'
The manager coaches the opposition vets side, who won the Top Tier title last season, together with Paul Maguire.
"We went 1-0 ahead and had a