🔗 Share this article

What can you enhance a excellent veteran side who have secured back-to-back championships, including a double triumph with thirty victories from thirty-two games?

Sign a raft of ex- professionals who have played at the top level of club and international soccer as you target additional trophies.

One Greater Manchester side has an amateur vets team with 9 former Premier League footballers in their present roster.

222 Top Division Scores, 325 Global Appearances

The team Vets Over-35s are located in southern Manchester and compete in the Cheshire-based Vets League Top Tier.

Their roster this season features nine ex- top-flight players, with a combined over 1,800 top-flight games.

The elite roster also includes 222 Premier League scores and over 320 international appearances.

The squad include Papiss Cisse, who notched thirty-seven scores in over 100 games for his former club after moving to them for £9m from German league club SC Freiburg in 2012.

Cisse had his first appearance for Wythenshawe in their most recent home-field match versus reigning champions their rivals and scored every one of the six scores in a 6-2 win - featuring a 32-minute first-half hat-trick.

Wythenshawe's roster for this season also features ex- professionals such as England and Liverpool forward Emile Heskey, Hull and Burnley FC midfielder George Boyd, Toffees striker Oumar Niasse, Wigan full-back Maynor Figueroa, City pair Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and Premier League championship victors Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.

Collectively, the former Premier League footballers have won fifteen big trophies and moved for combined transfer sums of around £123 million.

Famous Names and International Players

Ireland began playing for the side in preseason this season through good mate and current Wythenshawe teammate Blake Norton, and the ex- Republic of Ireland midfielder then invited other ex-pros, who all play in a midweek nine-a-side game, to join in.

Former Senegal forward Niasse, who netted 12 goals in sixty-five top-flight matches for Everton and still goes to their home games, also had his first appearance versus Collegiate OB - who are located in Liverpool and use an Blue training kit as their strip.

"A mate Stephen told me 'join and play, it's a laugh'," commented Niasse.

"Then he informed me we were facing a team from the city and the surprise I had when I saw them wearing Blue shirts - I say this is wrong for me!

"When you still love football and you feel you can still do it, anywhere you can kick a ball, what are you going to choose?

"Those spectators who turn up and see are happy and to make someone's moment if they see us competing there and to pose us queries - it's really about the pleasure of us getting a place we can enjoy football, with structure of course."

So great is the strength in depth at the club, Niasse made his first game at defender.

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

"I warn my defender 'I'm not staying' and that I'm just going to continue attacking.

"The running is what I'm looking for. It's enjoyable."

Unreal Experience

In addition to Cisse's six goals on debut, Stephen Ireland has scored eight in three games for Wythenshawe, while George Boyd hit five on his debut match and Lescott, a centre-half by position, notched a hat-trick in one match as a striker.

The team are leading of the Top Division with three wins from 3 and a goal difference of plus nineteen.

Paul Barrow, 38, who plays on the flank for the opposition, came up against ex- Latics full-back Maynor Figueroa on the weekend - and had to tell his young son who Emile Heskey was.

He has appeared at two World Cups for his country, in addition to playing in over two hundred Premier League games.

"It was spreading like a rumor they had these ex-Premier League stars," said the player.

"I felt I was a bit awestruck playing against Figueroa to be honest.

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

"We held our own for a solid twenty mins but then we had a player dismissed and it was tough.

"Our group really haven't stopped chatting about it - I was phoning my mum and sibling 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 can't wait for the second fixture."

We Will Still Win the Title'

The manager coaches the opposition veterans side, who secured the Premier Tier championship last season, together with Paul Maguire.

"We scored one-nil up and had a