Introduce the Weekend League Team With Nearly Two Thousand Top-Flight Matches
What can you improve a outstanding veteran squad that have secured consecutive championships, including a league-cup double boasting 30 wins from 32 games?
Recruit a raft of former professionals who have played at the elite level of club football and global soccer as you aim for further honors.
A Manchester club fields an non-professional veterans squad with 9 ex- Premier League footballers in their current lineup.
Two Hundred Twenty-Two Premier League Goals, 325 Global Caps
The team Vets Over-35s are located in south Manchester and play in the Cheshire Veterans League Premier Division.
The squad list this season boasts nine former top-flight footballers, with a combined over 1,800 top-flight appearances.
The elite roster also includes 222 Premier League goals and 325 global caps.
The squad include Papiss Cisse, who netted 37 scores in 117 games for his former club after moving to them for nine million pounds from German league club Freiburg in 2012.
Cisse made his debut for Wythenshawe in their last home match against defending champions Collegiate Old Boys and netted every one of the six goals in a six-two victory - including a half-hour opening period triple.
The team for this campaign also features ex- professionals such as English and Liverpool striker Emile Heskey, Hull and Burnley FC midfielder George Boyd, Toffees striker Oumar Niasse, Wigan defender Maynor Figueroa, Manchester City pair Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and Premier League championship victors Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.
Collectively, the former top-flight footballers have won fifteen significant honors and moved for total transfer sums of around £123 million.
Household Names and Global Players
Ireland started playing for the team in pre-season this season through close friend and present team teammate Blake Norton, and the ex- Irish player then invited additional ex-pros, who all play in a weekly nine-a-side match, to participate.
Former Senegal striker Oumar Niasse, who scored twelve goals in 65 top-flight matches for the Toffees and even now goes to their matches at Goodison Park, also had his first appearance against Collegiate OB - who are based in the city and use an Everton training kit as their uniform.
"A friend Stephen Ireland told me 'join and play, it's enjoyable'," commented the striker.
"After that he informed me we were playing a side from Liverpool and the shock I had when I noticed them wearing Everton kits - I say this is wrong for me!
"If you still enjoy football and you know you can still do it, anywhere you can kick a ball, what are you going to do?
"Those fans who turn up and watch are happy and to make someone's moment if they see us playing there and to ask us queries - it's really about the joy of us getting somewhere we can enjoy football, with structure of course."
So great is the squad depth at Wythenshawe, he had his first game at defender.
"It's a little different but then, I enjoy sprinting and just move inside - I'm not defending that much," he said.
"I warn my defender 'I'm not hanging back' and that I'm just going to keep running.
"That running is what I'm seeking. It's good fun."
'Surreal Scenario
In addition to Cisse's 6 goals on his first game, Ireland has netted eight in 3 appearances for Wythenshawe, while George Boyd hit five on his first match and Joleon Lescott, a defender by trade, notched a hat-trick in one game as a striker.
Wythenshawe are leading of the Premier Tier with three wins from three and a goal difference of plus nineteen.
Paul Barrow, thirty-eight, who features on the wing for the opposition, faced former Latics defender Maynor Figueroa on Sunday - and had to explain his nine-year-old boy who Emile Heskey was.
He has appeared at 2 World Cups for Honduras, in as well as featuring in over 200 top-flight games.
"It was going round like a rumor they had these ex-Premier League players," said the player.
"I felt I was a bit awestruck playing against him to be honest.
"Also Heskey got on and he's got 60-odd English appearances.
"Our side held our own for a solid 20 mins but then we had a player sent off and it was hard.
"Our group really have not stopped talking about it - I was calling my mum and brother on the journey home.
"They were all really nice, shaking our hands after the match - it was like facing a bunch of normal fellas.
"Now we are eager for the return match."
'We'll Still Take the League'
Andy Kirby coaches the Collegiate veterans team, who won the Premier Division championship last season, along with Paul Maguire.
"Our team scored one-nil up and had a