🔗 Share this article

How can you enhance a excellent experienced team that have secured consecutive titles, featuring a double triumph with thirty wins from 32 games?

Bring in a group of former professionals that have competed at the elite tier of club and global soccer as you target more honors.

A Manchester club boasts an non-professional vets team with 9 former top-flight footballers in their active squad.

222 Premier League Scores, 325 Global Appearances

The team Vets Over-35s are situated in south Manchester and play in the Cheshire Veterans Division Premier Tier.

The roster this season boasts nine ex- top-flight players, with a total over 1,800 top-flight games.

This star-studded squad also includes 222 top division goals and 325 international caps.

They feature Papiss Cisse, who notched thirty-seven scores in over 100 appearances for Newcastle United after moving to them for nine million pounds from German league club Freiburg in January 2012.

He had his debut for the team in their most recent home match versus defending champions Collegiate Old Boys and scored all six scores in a 6-2 victory - including a 32-minute opening period hat-trick.

Wythenshawe's roster for this campaign also includes former pros such as England and Anfield striker Emile Heskey, Hull and Burnley winger 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.

In total, the former Premier League players have claimed 15 big honors and moved for total transfer fees of around £123 million.

Household Figures and Global Stars

Ireland started turning out for the team in preseason this season through close friend and present team teammate Blake Norton, and the former Irish midfielder then asked other ex-pros, who all play in a midweek nine-a-side game, to join in.

Former Senegal striker Niasse, who netted twelve scores in sixty-five Premier League matches for the Toffees and even now goes to their home games, also made his first appearance versus the opposition - who are located in the city and use an Everton training kit as their uniform.

"A mate Stephen said 'come and play, it's good fun'," commented the striker.

"Then he informed me we were facing a team from Liverpool and the shock I had when I saw them wearing Everton kits - I say this is strange for me!

"If you still enjoy football and you feel you can still do it, anywhere you can kick a ball, what are you going to choose?

"The spectators who turn up and see are pleased and to give a day if they see us competing there and to ask us queries - it's really about the pleasure of us having a place we can enjoy football, with organisation of course."

So great is the strength in depth at Wythenshawe, Niasse had his first game 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 said.

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

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

Dreamlike' Scenario

In addition to Cisse's 6 goals on his first game, Stephen Ireland has netted 8 in three appearances for Wythenshawe, while Boyd hit 5 on his first appearance and Lescott, a centre-half by position, notched a triple in one match up front.

Wythenshawe are leading of the Top Tier with 3 wins from three and a goal difference of +19.

Paul Barrow, thirty-eight, who plays on the wing for the opposition, came up against ex- Latics defender Figueroa on the weekend - and had to explain his nine-year-old boy who Heskey was.

Figueroa has played at two World Cups for his country, in as well as playing in more than two hundred top-flight matches.

"The news was spreading like a rumor they had these former top-flight stars," remarked Barrow.

"I think I was a little starstruck facing Figueroa to be honest.

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

"We competed well for a solid twenty minutes but then we had a player dismissed and it was tough.

"Our group literally haven't stopped talking about it - I was phoning my mum and sibling on the journey home.

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

"Now we are eager for the second match."

'We'll Still Win the League'

The manager coaches the Collegiate vets team, who won the Premier Tier title last season, together with Paul Maguire.

"We went one-nil up and had a