🔗 Share this article

What can you enhance a stellar experienced team who have secured consecutive championships, featuring a double triumph with 30 wins from 32 games?

Bring in a collection of former professionals who have performed at the top tier of club and global soccer as you aim for additional silverware.

A Manchester side boasts an amateur veterans squad with nine former top-flight players in their active roster.

222 Premier League Goals, Three Hundred Twenty-Five International Caps

The team Veterans Over-35s are located in southern the city and compete in the Cheshire Vets Division Premier Division.

Their lineup this campaign boasts nine former top-flight players, with a total 1,801 top-flight appearances.

This star-studded squad also includes 222 top division scores and 325 global caps.

The squad feature Papiss Cisse, who scored 37 goals in over 100 games for Newcastle United after joining them for nine million pounds from Bundesliga club Freiburg in 2012.

Cisse made his debut for the team in their most recent home-field game versus reigning champions their rivals and netted every one of the six goals in a six-two victory - featuring a half-hour first-half hat-trick.

Wythenshawe's roster for this season also includes former pros such as England and Liverpool striker Emile Heskey, Hull and Burnley FC winger George Boyd, Everton striker Oumar Niasse, Wigan Athletic defender Maynor Figueroa, City duo Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and Premier League championship winners Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.

In total, the ex- top-flight footballers have secured fifteen major trophies and moved for total transfer fees of around £123m.

Famous Names and International Players

Stephen Ireland started turning out for the team in pre-season this season through close friend and current Wythenshawe player Blake Norton, and the ex- Republic of Ireland midfielder then invited other ex-pros, who all play in a midweek nine-a-side game, to participate.

Ex- Senegalese forward Niasse, who netted twelve goals in sixty-five Premier League games for Everton and even now goes to their matches at Goodison Park, also had his first appearance versus Collegiate OB - who are based in Liverpool and use an Everton training kit as their uniform.

"My friend Stephen Ireland told me 'come and play, it's good fun'," said Niasse.

"After that he told me we were playing a side from the city and the surprise I had when I saw them sporting Everton kits - I thought this is strange for me!

"When you still enjoy football and you know you can still play, anywhere you can play, what are you going to choose?

"Those fans who turn up and see are happy and to make a moment if they see us playing there and to pose us queries - it's really about the joy of us having a place we can play, with organisation of course."

So great is the strength in depth at Wythenshawe, he made his debut at full-back.

"It's a bit unusual but then, I love running and just go forward - I'm not staying back that much," he added.

"I warn my defender 'I'm not hanging back' and that I'm just going to continue running.

"That movement is what I'm after. It's good fun."

Unreal Feeling

Along with Cisse's 6 scores on his first game, Stephen Ireland has scored eight in 3 games for Wythenshawe, while George Boyd hit 5 on his debut match and Lescott, a centre-half by trade, notched a triple in one game as a striker.

Wythenshawe are leading of the Top Tier with three wins from three and a goal difference of plus nineteen.

Paul Barrow, 38, who plays on the wing for the opposition, came up against former Wigan full-back Figueroa on Sunday - and had to tell his nine-year-old son who Heskey was.

Figueroa has appeared at two global tournaments for Honduras, in as well as featuring in more than 200 top-flight games.

"It was going round like wildfire they had these former top-flight stars," remarked Barrow.

"I felt I was a bit starstruck facing him to be honest.

"Also Heskey got on and he's got 60-odd English caps.

"We competed well for a solid twenty minutes but then we had a man sent off and it was hard.

"Our group literally have not stopped chatting about it - I was calling my mum and brother on the way home.

"They were all dead sound, shaking our hands after the game - it was like facing a bunch of normal guys.

"Now we are eager for the second fixture."

We Will Still Take the Title'

Andy Kirby manages the Collegiate vets team, who won the Premier Division title last season, along with Paul Maguire.

"We scored one-nil up and had a