🔗 Share this article

How can you enhance a stellar experienced team that have secured consecutive championships, including a league-cup double with thirty victories from thirty-two games?

Recruit a collection of former professionals that have played at the top tier of club football and global football as you pursue additional trophies.

A Manchester side boasts an non-professional veterans squad with 9 ex- Premier League players in their active lineup.

222 Top Division Goals, Three Hundred Twenty-Five Global Caps

Wythenshawe Vets Over-35s are based in south Manchester and compete in the Cheshire Veterans Division Top Tier.

The squad list this campaign features 9 former Premier League footballers, with a combined 1,801 top-flight appearances.

The high-profile roster also includes 222 top division goals and 325 global caps.

They include one forward, who scored 37 goals in over 100 appearances for Newcastle United after moving to them for nine million pounds from Bundesliga side SC Freiburg in January 2012.

Cisse made his debut for Wythenshawe in their most recent home-field game against reigning champions their rivals and scored every one of the six goals in a 6-2 victory - including a half-hour first-half triple.

The squad for this season also includes former pros such as English and Anfield forward Emile Heskey, Hull and Burnley FC winger George Boyd, Everton 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 Premier League footballers have secured fifteen big trophies and moved for total transfer sums of around £123m.

Household Figures and Global Players

Stephen Ireland began turning out for the team in preseason this summer through close friend and current team teammate Blake Norton, and the former Republic of Ireland player then invited other former professionals, who all play in a weekly nine-a-side match, to participate.

Ex- Senegalese striker Oumar Niasse, who scored 12 scores in sixty-five Premier League matches for Everton and still goes to their matches at Goodison Park, also had his debut against the opposition - who are located in Liverpool and wear an Blue warm-up gear as their uniform.

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

"Then he told me we were playing a team from the city and the shock I had when I saw them wearing Everton kits - I say this is wrong for me!

"If you still enjoy the game and you know you can still play, wherever you can play, what are you going to choose?

"The people who turn up and see are pleased and to give someone's day if they watch us competing there and to ask us questions - it's more like the pleasure of us having a place we can play, with structure of course."

So great is the bench strength at the club, Niasse had his debut at full-back.

"That's a little unusual but then, I love running and just go forward - I'm not defending that much," he said.

"I warn my defender 'I'm not staying' and that I'm just going to keep running.

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

'Surreal Scenario

In addition to Cisse's 6 scores on debut, Stephen Ireland has scored eight in three appearances for the side, while George Boyd hit five on his debut appearance and Joleon Lescott, a defender by position, notched a hat-trick in one match as a striker.

The team are leading of the Premier Tier with three wins from three and a goal difference of plus nineteen.

One opponent, thirty-eight, who plays on the flank for the opposition, faced former Wigan full-back Figueroa on the weekend - and had to tell his nine-year-old son who Emile Heskey was.

Figueroa has played at 2 World Cups for Honduras, in addition to playing in more than two hundred top-flight matches.

"It was spreading like wildfire they had these former top-flight stars," remarked the player.

"I felt I was a little starstruck facing Figueroa to be honest.

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

"We competed well for a solid 20 mins but then we had a player sent off and it was hard.

"We really haven't ceased chatting about it - I was calling my mum and sibling on the journey home.

"The opponents were all friendly, shaking our hands after the match - it was like playing a bunch of regular guys.

"Now we are eager for the second fixture."

'We'll Still Win the League'

Andy Kirby coaches the Collegiate veterans team, who secured the Premier Division championship last season, along with his co-manager.

"Our team scored one-nil ahead and had a