Discover this Weekend Division Squad Featuring Nearly Two Thousand Top-Flight Games
How do you enhance a excellent experienced side who have won consecutive championships, including a league-cup double boasting thirty wins from thirty-two games?
Recruit a collection of ex- professionals that have performed at the top level of club and international soccer as you aim for more silverware.
A Manchester club boasts an amateur veterans squad with 9 ex- top-flight players in their current squad.
222 Premier League Goals, 325 International Caps
Wythenshawe Veterans Over-35s are based in southern Manchester and compete in the Cheshire-based Veterans League Top Tier.
Their roster this campaign includes nine ex- top-flight players, with a collective over 1,800 elite games.
This elite squad also includes over 220 Premier League scores and 325 international caps.
The squad include Papiss Cisse, who scored 37 scores in over 100 games for his former club after signing for them for nine million pounds from German league side Freiburg in 2012.
He made his debut for the team in their most recent home game versus defending champions Collegiate Old Boys and scored all six goals in a six-two win - including a 32-minute opening period hat-trick.
Wythenshawe's team for this season also includes former professionals such as England and Anfield forward Emile Heskey, Hull City and Burnley FC winger George Boyd, Toffees forward Oumar Niasse, Wigan Athletic full-back Maynor Figueroa, Manchester City duo Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and Premier League title victors Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.
Collectively, the former Premier League players have won fifteen big trophies and transferred for combined transfer fees of around £123 million.
Household Names and International Players
Stephen Ireland began turning out for the side during preseason this season through good friend and present team teammate Blake Norton, and the ex- Republic of Ireland midfielder then asked additional former professionals, who all compete in a weekly small-sided match, to join in.
Former Senegalese striker Niasse, who netted twelve scores in sixty-five top-flight games for Everton and even now goes to their home games, also had his debut versus the opposition - who are located in the city and use an Blue training kit as their uniform.
"My friend Stephen Ireland said 'join and have a game, it's enjoyable'," said Niasse.
"After that he informed me we were facing a team from Liverpool and the surprise I had when I saw them wearing Everton kits - I say this is wrong for me!
"If you still love the game and you feel you can still play, wherever you can play, what are you going to do?
"The people who turn up and see are happy and to make a day if they see us competing there and to pose us questions - it's more like the pleasure of us getting somewhere we can play, with structure of course."
So great is the squad depth at the club, he made his first game at full-back.
"That's a bit different but then, I enjoy sprinting and just go forward - I'm not defending that much," he said.
"I tell my centre-back 'I'm not staying' and that I'm just going to continue running.
"That movement is what I'm looking for. It's enjoyable."
Dreamlike' Experience
Along with the forward's six scores on debut, Stephen Ireland has scored 8 in 3 appearances for Wythenshawe, while Boyd scored 5 on his debut appearance and Lescott, a defender by position, scored a triple in one match as a striker.
The team are leading of the Top Tier with 3 wins from 3 and a GD of plus nineteen.
Paul Barrow, thirty-eight, who plays on the flank for Collegiate OB, faced former Wigan defender Figueroa on the weekend - and had to tell his nine-year-old son who Heskey was.
Figueroa has appeared at 2 World Cups for his country, in addition to playing in more than two hundred Premier League games.
"It was spreading like wildfire they had these ex-Premier League stars," said Barrow.
"I felt I was a bit starstruck playing against him to be honest.
"Even Heskey came on and he's got 60-odd English caps.
"Our side competed well for a solid 20 minutes but then we had a man dismissed and it was hard.
"We literally haven't stopped talking about it - I was calling my mum and brother on the way home.
"The opponents were all dead sound, shaking our hands after the match - it was like facing a bunch of regular fellas.
"Now we can't wait for the return fixture."
'We'll Still Take the Title'
The manager manages the Collegiate veterans team, who won the Top Division championship the previous campaign, together with Paul Maguire.
"Our team went 1-0 ahead and had a