Meet the Sunday League Club With Nearly Two Thousand Top-Flight Appearances
How can you boost a stellar veteran team that have won back-to-back championships, featuring a double triumph boasting 30 victories from thirty-two matches?
Sign a collection of ex- professionals that have played at the highest level of club football and international football as you aim for additional honors.
One Manchester side boasts an amateur vets squad with nine ex- top-flight players in their active lineup.
222 Top Division Goals, 325 Global Caps
Wythenshawe Vets Over-35s are based in southern the city and play in the Cheshire-based Veterans League Premier Division.
Their roster this campaign boasts 9 former Premier League footballers, with a collective over 1,800 top-flight games.
This elite squad also includes over 220 Premier League scores and over 320 international caps.
The squad include one forward, who scored thirty-seven scores in over 100 appearances for Newcastle United after signing for them for £9m from German league club SC Freiburg in 2012.
He made his first appearance for the team in their most recent home-field game against reigning champions their rivals and scored all six scores in a six-two win - featuring a 32-minute first-half triple.
The roster for this campaign also includes former professionals such as England and Liverpool striker Emile Heskey, Hull City and Burnley winger George Boyd, Everton forward Oumar Niasse, Wigan Athletic defender Maynor Figueroa, City pair Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and top-flight title winners Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.
Together, the former top-flight players have claimed 15 major trophies and transferred for total transfer fees of about £123 million.
Household Figures and International Stars
Stephen Ireland started playing for the side during preseason this season through close friend and present Wythenshawe teammate Blake Norton, and the ex- Republic of Ireland midfielder then invited other ex-pros, who all compete in a weekly nine-a-side match, to participate.
Ex- Senegalese forward Oumar Niasse, who scored 12 scores in sixty-five Premier League games for the Toffees and even now goes to their matches at Goodison Park, also had his first appearance versus Collegiate OB - who are based in the city and use an Everton training kit as their uniform.
"A friend Stephen Ireland said 'come and have a game, it's enjoyable'," commented the striker.
"Then he told me we were playing a team from the city and the surprise I had when I noticed them wearing Everton kits - I thought this is strange for me!
"When you still enjoy the game and you know you can still play, wherever you can play, what are you going to choose?
"The fans who turn up and see are happy and to give someone's day if they see us playing there and to pose us questions - it's more like the pleasure of us getting somewhere we can enjoy football, with organisation of course."
So great is the bench strength at Wythenshawe, Niasse made his first game at full-back.
"That's a bit unusual but then, I love running and just go inside - I'm not defending that much," he added.
"I tell my centre-back 'I'm not staying' and that I'm just going to keep attacking.
"That running is what I'm looking for. It's enjoyable."
Unreal Feeling
Along with Cisse's six goals on debut, Ireland has scored 8 in three games for the side, while Boyd scored five on his first appearance and Lescott, a defender by trade, scored a triple in one match as a striker.
Wythenshawe are top of the Top Division with three wins from 3 and a goal difference of plus nineteen.
Paul Barrow, thirty-eight, who plays on the wing for the opposition, faced former Latics defender Maynor Figueroa on Sunday - and had to tell his nine-year-old son who Heskey was.
Figueroa has played at two World Cups for his country, in as well as playing in over two hundred top-flight games.
"The news was going round like wildfire they had all these former top-flight stars," said the player.
"I felt I was a little awestruck playing against Figueroa to be honest.
"Also Emile [Heskey] came on and he's has over 60 English appearances.
"We held our own for a good twenty minutes but then we had a player dismissed and it was hard.
"Our group really haven't stopped talking about it - I was phoning my mum and sibling on the way home.
"They were all friendly, shaking our hands after the game - it was like playing a group of normal fellas.
"Now we can't wait for the return fixture."
We Will Still Win the Title'
The manager coaches the Collegiate veterans side, who secured the Premier Tier championship last season, together with Paul Maguire.
"Our team went one-nil ahead and had a