Discover the Weekend Division Team Boasting Nearly Two Thousand Top-Flight Games
What do you enhance a stellar veteran squad that have won back-to-back championships, featuring a league-cup double with thirty wins from thirty-two matches?
Recruit a raft of former professionals that have competed at the highest tier of club and international soccer as you target more trophies.
A Manchester club has an non-professional veterans team with nine former top-flight footballers in their current squad.
Two Hundred Twenty-Two Premier League Scores, Three Hundred Twenty-Five International Caps
The team Vets Over-35s are located in south the city and play in the Cheshire Vets League Premier Division.
Their squad list this campaign includes 9 former top-flight footballers, with a combined over 1,800 top-flight matches.
The high-profile roster also boasts over 220 top division goals and over 320 international appearances.
The squad feature Papiss Cisse, who scored 37 goals in over 100 games for his former club after signing for them for nine million pounds from German league side SC Freiburg in 2012.
Cisse had his debut for the team in their most recent home match versus reigning title holders their rivals and scored every one of the six goals in a six-two win - featuring a 32-minute first-half hat-trick.
The team for this season also features ex- professionals such as England and Anfield striker Emile Heskey, Hull City and Burnley FC winger George Boyd, Toffees forward Oumar Niasse, Wigan Athletic full-back Maynor Figueroa, City pair Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and top-flight title winners Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.
In total, the ex- top-flight footballers have won 15 significant honors and transferred for total transfer sums of approximately Β£123m.
Well-Known Names and International Stars
Ireland started playing for the team during preseason this summer through close friend and current team teammate Blake Norton, and the former Republic of Ireland player then invited other ex-pros, who all play in a midweek small-sided match, to join in.
Ex- Senegal striker Niasse, who scored twelve scores in sixty-five top-flight matches for Everton and still goes to their home games, also made his debut against Collegiate OB - who are based in the city and wear an Everton warm-up gear as their uniform.
"A mate Stephen Ireland told me 'join and have a game, it's a laugh'," commented the striker.
"After that he informed me we were playing a team from the city and the shock I had when I noticed them sporting Blue kits - I say this is strange for me!
"If you still enjoy the game and you know you can still do it, wherever you can kick a ball, what are you going to do?
"Those spectators who come and see are pleased and to make a day if they watch us playing there and to ask us queries - it's really about the pleasure of us having a place we can play, with structure of course."
Such is the bench strength at the club, Niasse made his first game at full-back.
"That's a bit different but then, I enjoy running and just move inside - I'm not staying back that much," he said.
"I tell my defender 'I'm not hanging back' and that I'm just going to keep attacking.
"That movement is what I'm after. It's enjoyable."
Unreal Experience
Along with Cisse's six scores on debut, Stephen Ireland has scored 8 in 3 games for Wythenshawe, while George Boyd hit five on his debut appearance and Lescott, a centre-half by trade, scored a hat-trick in one match as a striker.
Wythenshawe are top of the Premier Division with 3 wins from 3 and a goal difference of +19.
One opponent, 38, who plays on the wing for the opposition, came up against former Latics defender Figueroa on Sunday - and had to explain his nine-year-old boy who Heskey was.
Figueroa has appeared at two World Cups for his country, in as well as playing in more than two hundred top-flight matches.
"The news was going round like a rumor they had all these ex-Premier League players," remarked the player.
"I felt I was a bit starstruck playing against him to be honest.
"Also Emile [Heskey] got on and he's has over 60 English appearances.
"Our side held our own for a good 20 mins but then we had a man sent off and it was tough.
"Our group literally haven't stopped chatting about it - I was phoning my mother and sibling on the journey home.
"They were all really nice, shaking our hands after the match - it was like playing a bunch of normal fellas.
"Now we are eager for the return fixture."
'We'll Still Take the Title'
Andy Kirby manages the opposition vets team, who secured the Top Tier title last season, together with Paul Maguire.
"We scored one-nil up and had a