Meet the Weekend Division Squad Boasting 1,800 English Top Division Matches
What can you boost a stellar experienced team that have secured consecutive championships, including a league-cup double with thirty wins from 32 matches?
Sign a group of former pro players that have played at the elite tier of club football and global soccer as you target further honors.
A Manchester side fields an non-professional veterans squad with nine ex- top-flight players in their present lineup.
222 Top Division Goals, Three Hundred Twenty-Five International Appearances
The team Vets Over 35s are located in south Manchester and play in the Cheshire-based Veterans League Top Division.
Their lineup this campaign boasts 9 former Premier League footballers, with a combined 1,801 top-flight matches.
This elite squad also contains 222 Premier League scores and over 320 global caps.
They include Papiss Cisse, who scored thirty-seven scores in over 100 games for Newcastle United after signing for them for £9m from Bundesliga side SC Freiburg in 2012.
He had his first appearance for Wythenshawe in their most recent home-field match versus reigning champions Collegiate Old Boys and scored all six goals in a six-two win - including a half-hour first-half hat-trick.
Wythenshawe's squad for this season also includes ex- professionals such as England and Liverpool forward Emile Heskey, Hull City and Burnley FC winger George Boyd, Toffees forward Oumar Niasse, Wigan full-back Maynor Figueroa, City pair Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and Premier League championship victors Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.
Together, the former top-flight players have secured 15 significant honors and moved for total transfer fees of about £123 million.
Well-Known Names and International Stars
Stephen Ireland started turning out for the team in pre-season this summer through good mate and present team teammate Blake Norton, and the former Republic of Ireland midfielder then invited additional ex-pros, who all play in a weekly nine-a-side match, to participate.
Ex- Senegalese striker Niasse, who scored twelve scores in sixty-five top-flight games for the Toffees and still goes to their home games, also had his first appearance against Collegiate OB - who are located in Liverpool and wear an Everton training kit as their strip.
"A friend Stephen Ireland told me 'come and play, it's good fun'," commented the striker.
"After that he informed me we were playing a side from the city and the surprise I had when I saw them wearing Blue shirts - I say this is strange for me!
"When you still love football and you know you can still play, anywhere you can play, what are you going to do?
"Those fans who come and watch are pleased and to give someone's day if they watch us playing there and to pose us queries - it's more like the pleasure of us getting a place we can enjoy football, with organisation of course."
Such is the strength in depth at the club, Niasse had his first game at defender.
"It's a little unusual but then, I enjoy sprinting and just go forward - I'm not staying back that much," he added.
"I warn my centre-back 'I'm not staying' and that I'm just going to keep attacking.
"The movement is what I'm looking for. It's enjoyable."
'Surreal Scenario
Along with Cisse's 6 goals on debut, Ireland has netted 8 in three games for Wythenshawe, while George Boyd hit five on his first match and Lescott, a defender by trade, scored a triple in one game up front.
Wythenshawe are top of the Premier Division with 3 victories from three and a GD of +19.
Paul Barrow, thirty-eight, who features on the flank for the opposition, faced ex- Latics defender Figueroa on the weekend - and had to explain his young boy who Heskey was.
Figueroa has appeared at two World Cups for Honduras, in addition to featuring in more than two hundred Premier League matches.
"It was going round like a rumor they had these ex-Premier League stars," remarked Barrow.
"I think I was a bit awestruck facing him to be honest.
"Even Heskey came on and he's has 60-odd England appearances.
"We held our own for a good 20 mins but then we had a player sent off and it was tough.
"We literally have not ceased chatting about it - I was phoning my mother and sibling on the way home.
"The opponents were all friendly, shaking our hands after the match - it was like facing a group of regular fellas.
"Now we can't wait for the second fixture."
We Will Still Take the Title'
The manager coaches the Collegiate vets side, who won the Premier Tier championship last season, along with his co-manager.
"Our team scored one-nil ahead and had a