Introduce the Weekend League Team Boasting 1,800 Top-Flight Appearances
How can you improve a excellent veteran side who have secured back-to-back championships, including a double triumph boasting 30 wins from thirty-two matches?
Sign a group of former pro players that have played at the highest tier of club football and international football as you target additional honors.
A Greater Manchester team boasts an amateur vets team with nine former Premier League players in their present lineup.
Two Hundred Twenty-Two Premier League Goals, Three Hundred Twenty-Five International Appearances
The team Veterans Over-35s are based in southern Manchester and compete in the Cheshire Veterans Division Top Division.
The roster this season includes 9 ex- Premier League footballers, with a combined nearly 1,800 top-flight games.
This elite roster also includes 222 top division goals and 325 international caps.
They include Papiss Cisse, who notched thirty-seven goals in 117 games for Newcastle United after joining them for £9m from German league side SC Freiburg in January 2012.
He made his debut for Wythenshawe in their most recent home match versus reigning champions their rivals and scored every one of the six goals in a 6-2 victory - featuring a 32-minute opening period triple.
Wythenshawe's squad for this campaign also features former pros such as English and Liverpool forward Emile Heskey, Hull and Burnley FC winger George Boyd, Toffees forward Oumar Niasse, Wigan full-back Maynor Figueroa, City duo Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and Premier League championship victors Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.
Collectively, the ex- top-flight players have claimed fifteen big trophies and transferred for combined transfer sums of approximately £123m.
Well-Known Figures and Global Players
Stephen Ireland started playing for the team in pre-season this summer through good friend and current team teammate Blake Norton, and the former Irish midfielder then invited additional former professionals, who all compete in a midweek nine-a-side game, to participate.
Ex- Senegalese forward Oumar Niasse, who scored 12 goals in 65 Premier League matches for Everton and even now attends their home games, also had his first appearance versus Collegiate OB - who are based in the city and use an Blue warm-up gear as their uniform.
"A friend Stephen told me 'come and play, it's good fun'," commented Niasse.
"After that he told me we were playing a side from Liverpool and the surprise I had when I noticed them sporting Everton kits - I say this is strange for me!
"If you still enjoy the game and you feel you can still do it, anywhere you can kick a ball, what are you going to do?
"The spectators who turn up and watch are happy and to make someone's moment if they watch us competing there and to ask us queries - it's more like the joy of us having somewhere we can enjoy football, with structure of course."
Such is the squad depth at the club, he had his debut at defender.
"It's a bit unusual but then, I love sprinting and just move inside - I'm not defending that much," he added.
"I tell my defender 'I'm not hanging back' and that I'm just going to keep running.
"That movement is what I'm looking for. It's good fun."
'Surreal Experience
In addition to the forward's 6 scores on his first game, Stephen Ireland has netted eight in three appearances for Wythenshawe, while Boyd scored 5 on his first match and Lescott, a defender by trade, scored a triple in one match up front.
The team are leading of the Premier Division with 3 victories from 3 and a GD of +19.
Paul Barrow, thirty-eight, who features on the flank for Collegiate OB, faced former Wigan full-back Figueroa on Sunday - and had to tell his young son who Heskey was.
Figueroa has played at two World Cups for Honduras, in addition to playing in over two hundred Premier League matches.
"The news was spreading like a rumor they had all these former top-flight players," remarked the player.
"I think I was a bit awestruck playing against Figueroa to be honest.
"Even Emile [Heskey] came on and he's got over 60 English caps.
"We competed well for a solid twenty minutes but then we had a player dismissed and it was tough.
"We literally have not ceased chatting about it - I was calling my mother and sibling on the way home.
"The opponents were all dead sound, shaking our hands after the match - it was like facing a group of regular guys.
"Now we are eager for the second fixture."
We Will Still Take the League'
Andy Kirby coaches the opposition veterans team, who won the Premier Tier championship last season, along with Paul Maguire.
"We went 1-0 up and had a