🔗 Share this article

How can you boost a excellent veteran team who have secured back-to-back championships, featuring a double triumph with 30 victories from 32 games?

Recruit a group of ex- professionals who have competed at the elite tier of club football and global soccer as you aim for more silverware.

A Manchester club fields an non-professional veterans team with 9 former top-flight players in their current roster.

Two Hundred Twenty-Two Premier League Goals, 325 International Appearances

The team Vets Over 35s are based in southern the city and compete in the Cheshire-based Veterans Division Premier Division.

Their roster this season features 9 former top-flight footballers, with a collective 1,801 top-flight games.

This high-profile roster also includes over 220 top division scores and 325 international caps.

The squad feature Papiss Cisse, who netted 37 scores in 117 appearances for his former club after moving to them for nine million pounds from German league club SC Freiburg in 2012.

Cisse made his first appearance for the team in their most recent home match against reigning title holders Collegiate Old Boys and scored all six scores in a six-two win - including a half-hour first-half triple.

Wythenshawe's squad for this season also includes former pros such as English and Anfield striker Emile Heskey, Hull City and Burnley FC winger George Boyd, Toffees forward Oumar Niasse, Wigan Athletic defender Maynor Figueroa, City pair Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and Premier League title victors Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.

Collectively, the ex- Premier League footballers have secured fifteen significant honors and moved for combined transfer fees of around £123m.

Well-Known Names and International Players

Stephen Ireland started turning out for the team during preseason this season through close mate and current Wythenshawe player Blake Norton, and the ex- Irish player then invited additional ex-pros, who all compete in a weekly small-sided match, to join in.

Ex- Senegalese forward Oumar Niasse, who netted twelve scores in 65 Premier League games for Everton and still goes to their home games, also had his first appearance against the opposition - who are based in Liverpool and wear an Everton warm-up gear as their strip.

"My friend Stephen Ireland said 'join and have a game, it's enjoyable'," commented the striker.

"Then he informed me we were playing a side from the city and the surprise I had when I noticed them wearing Blue shirts - I thought this is strange for me!

"When you still enjoy the game and you feel you can still play, anywhere you can kick a ball, what are you going to choose?

"The people who turn up and watch are pleased and to make a moment if they see us competing there and to ask us questions - it's really about the joy of us getting somewhere we can play, with organisation of course."

Such is the strength in depth at the club, he had his debut at defender.

"That's a little unusual but then, I love sprinting and just move inside - I'm not defending that much," he added.

"I warn my centre-back '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."

Dreamlike' Scenario

Along with Cisse's 6 scores on debut, Stephen Ireland has netted 8 in 3 games for the side, while George Boyd scored five on his first match and Joleon Lescott, a centre-half by trade, notched a hat-trick in one game up front.

Wythenshawe are top of the Top Division with three wins from three and a GD of +19.

One opponent, thirty-eight, who plays on the wing for Collegiate OB, came up against former Latics defender Figueroa on the weekend - and had to explain his nine-year-old boy who Heskey was.

Figueroa has appeared at 2 World Cups for Honduras, in addition to playing in more than 200 top-flight games.

"It was going round like wildfire they had all these ex-Premier League players," remarked the player.

"I felt I was a bit awestruck facing him to be honest.

"Also Emile [Heskey] got on and he's has 60-odd England caps.

"We competed well for a solid twenty minutes but then we had a player sent off and it was tough.

"We literally have not stopped talking about it - I was phoning my mum and sibling on the way home.

"They were all dead sound, shaking our hands after the game - it was like facing a bunch of regular fellas.

"Now we are eager for the return match."

We Will Still Take the League'

Andy Kirby coaches the opposition vets team, who won the Top Division title the previous campaign, along with his co-manager.

"We scored one-nil up and had a