🔗 Share this article

What can you boost a stellar experienced team that have won back-to-back titles, featuring a league-cup double with 30 victories from 32 games?

Sign a raft of former professionals that have competed at the top level of club football and international football as you target further trophies.

One Greater Manchester club has an non-professional veterans team with 9 former Premier League players in their current lineup.

Two Hundred Twenty-Two Top Division Goals, Three Hundred Twenty-Five International Appearances

Wythenshawe Vets Over-35s are based in south Manchester and play in the Cheshire-based Vets League Top Tier.

Their roster this campaign features nine ex- top-flight players, with a total nearly 1,800 top-flight games.

The high-profile team also boasts over 220 Premier League scores and 325 international caps.

They include one forward, who scored thirty-seven scores in 117 appearances for his former club after joining them for nine million pounds from German league side Freiburg in 2012.

Cisse had his first appearance for Wythenshawe in their most recent home-field match versus reigning champions their rivals and scored every one of the six goals in a six-two win - featuring a 32-minute first-half hat-trick.

Wythenshawe's team for this campaign also includes ex- pros such as English and Anfield striker Emile Heskey, Hull City and Burnley FC winger George Boyd, Toffees striker Oumar Niasse, Wigan defender Maynor Figueroa, City duo Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and top-flight championship victors Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.

In total, the ex- Premier League players have claimed 15 significant honors and transferred for total transfer sums of around £123 million.

Well-Known Names and International Stars

Ireland started turning out for the team during preseason this summer through close friend and present Wythenshawe teammate Blake Norton, and the former Republic of Ireland player then invited additional ex-pros, who all play in a midweek small-sided game, to join in.

Ex- Senegal forward Oumar Niasse, who netted 12 goals in sixty-five top-flight matches for the Toffees and even now goes to their matches at Goodison Park, also made his first appearance against Collegiate OB - who are located in Liverpool and wear an Blue training kit as their strip.

"My friend Stephen said 'come and play, it's good fun'," said the striker.

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

"If you still love football and you know you can still play, anywhere you can play, what are you going to do?

"Those fans who turn up and see are pleased and to give a moment if they watch us playing there and to pose us queries - it's really about the joy of us getting a place we can enjoy football, with organisation of course."

So great is the strength in depth at the club, he made his first game at full-back.

"It's a bit different but then, I enjoy running and just go inside - I'm not defending that much," he added.

"I tell my defender 'I'm not staying' and that I'm just going to keep attacking.

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

Dreamlike' Scenario

Along with Cisse's 6 scores on his first game, Ireland has netted 8 in three games for the side, while George Boyd hit five on his debut match and Joleon Lescott, a defender by trade, notched a hat-trick in one match as a striker.

The team are leading of the Top Division with 3 wins from 3 and a GD of +19.

Paul Barrow, 38, who plays on the wing for Collegiate OB, came up against former Latics defender Maynor Figueroa on Sunday - and had to explain his young boy who Heskey was.

He has appeared at 2 global tournaments for his country, in as well as featuring in more than two hundred Premier League games.

"It was spreading like wildfire they had all these former top-flight players," said the player.

"I think I was a little awestruck playing against him to be honest.

"Even Emile [Heskey] came on and he's has 60-odd English caps.

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

"We really have not stopped chatting about it - I was phoning my mother and sibling on the journey home.

"The opponents were all really nice, shaking our hands after the match - it was like facing a group of normal fellas.

"Now we are eager for the second match."

'We'll Still Take the League'

The manager manages the opposition veterans team, who won the Premier Division title last season, together with his co-manager.

"We scored one-nil up and had a