🔗 Share this article

How do you improve a outstanding experienced team that have won consecutive championships, featuring a double triumph boasting 30 victories from 32 games?

Bring in a group of ex- professionals who have played at the elite tier of club and global soccer as you pursue further honors.

A Manchester side boasts an non-professional veterans team with nine former Premier League players in their current lineup.

222 Top Division Scores, 325 Global Appearances

Wythenshawe Veterans Over-35s are based in southern the city and play in the Cheshire Vets Division Top Division.

Their roster this campaign includes 9 ex- Premier League footballers, with a total 1,801 elite matches.

This high-profile roster also contains over 220 top division goals and 325 international caps.

The squad include Papiss Cisse, who scored 37 goals in 117 games for his former club after moving to them for £9m from German league club Freiburg in January 2012.

He made his debut for the team in their last home game versus reigning champions Collegiate Old Boys and scored every one of the six scores in a six-two win - featuring a half-hour opening period hat-trick.

The squad for this season also features former pros such as English and Anfield striker Emile Heskey, Hull City and Burnley FC midfielder George Boyd, Toffees forward Oumar Niasse, Wigan full-back Maynor Figueroa, City duo Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and Premier League championship victors Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.

Together, the former Premier League footballers have claimed fifteen significant honors and transferred for total transfer sums of approximately £123m.

Household Figures and International Stars

Stephen Ireland began turning out for the side in preseason this summer through good friend and current team teammate Blake Norton, and the former Republic of Ireland midfielder then invited other former professionals, who all compete in a weekly small-sided match, to join in.

Former Senegalese striker Oumar Niasse, who scored 12 goals in sixty-five top-flight matches for Everton and even now goes to their home games, also had his debut against the opposition - who are based in the city and use an Blue training kit as their strip.

"A mate Stephen told me 'come and have a game, it's good fun'," said Niasse.

"After that he told me we were facing a side from Liverpool and the surprise I had when I noticed them sporting Everton kits - I say this is strange for me!

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

"Those fans who come and watch are happy and to give a moment if they watch us competing there and to pose us queries - it's really about the joy of us getting somewhere we can play, with structure of course."

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

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

"I warn my centre-back 'I'm not hanging back' and that I'm just going to keep running.

"That movement is what I'm seeking. It's enjoyable."

'Surreal Feeling

Along with Cisse's 6 scores on debut, Stephen Ireland has netted eight in three appearances for the side, while Boyd hit five on his first appearance and Lescott, a centre-half by position, scored a hat-trick in one game as a striker.

Wythenshawe are leading of the Top Tier with three victories from 3 and a GD of plus nineteen.

Paul Barrow, 38, who plays on the flank for the opposition, came up against ex- Latics defender Maynor Figueroa on the weekend - and had to tell his nine-year-old son who Heskey was.

He has played at two World Cups for Honduras, in addition to featuring in more than two hundred top-flight games.

"It was spreading like a rumor they had these former top-flight players," remarked the player.

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

"Even Heskey got on and he's has 60-odd England caps.

"Our side competed well for a good 20 minutes but then we had a man dismissed and it was hard.

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

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

"Now we are eager for the return match."

'We'll Still Win the Title'

The manager manages the Collegiate vets team, who won the Premier Division title the previous campaign, together with his co-manager.

"Our team went 1-0 ahead and had a