Discover this Sunday Division Team Boasting Nearly Two Thousand Top-Flight Appearances
How can you boost a outstanding experienced side that have won back-to-back championships, featuring a league-cup double with thirty wins from 32 games?
Sign a group of former pro players who have performed at the top tier of club football and global football as you target further silverware.
A Greater Manchester team boasts an non-professional veterans team with nine former Premier League players in their current lineup.
222 Top Division Scores, 325 International Caps
Wythenshawe Veterans Over 35s are based in south the city and compete in the Cheshire-based Veterans League Top Division.
The roster this campaign boasts nine former top-flight footballers, with a collective 1,801 elite appearances.
This elite squad also boasts 222 top division scores and over 320 global caps.
The squad feature Papiss Cisse, who scored thirty-seven goals in over 100 appearances for his former club after signing for them for £9m from Bundesliga club Freiburg in January 2012.
He had his debut for the team in their most recent home-field match versus defending champions their rivals and netted every one of the six goals in a 6-2 win - featuring a half-hour opening period hat-trick.
The team for this campaign also features former pros such as England and Anfield striker Emile Heskey, Hull and Burnley FC winger George Boyd, Everton forward Oumar Niasse, Wigan Athletic full-back Maynor Figueroa, Manchester City duo Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and top-flight title victors Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.
Together, the ex- Premier League players have won fifteen major trophies and moved for combined transfer sums of approximately £123m.
Well-Known Names and Global Stars
Ireland began turning out for the team in preseason this summer through close friend and present team player Blake Norton, and the former Irish player then asked other ex-pros, who all compete in a midweek small-sided match, to participate.
Former Senegal forward Niasse, who netted twelve goals in sixty-five top-flight games for the Toffees and even now attends their matches at Goodison Park, also had his debut versus Collegiate OB - who are based in the city and wear an Everton training kit as their uniform.
"A friend Stephen said 'come and play, it's good fun'," said Niasse.
"Then he told me we were playing a side from Liverpool and the shock I had when I saw them sporting Blue shirts - I say this is wrong for me!
"When you still love the game and you feel you can still play, wherever you can play, what are you going to do?
"The people who turn up and see are happy and to make someone's day if they see us playing there and to ask us queries - it's really about the joy of us having somewhere we can enjoy football, with structure of course."
So great is the strength in depth at Wythenshawe, he made his debut 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 tell my centre-back 'I'm not staying' and that I'm just going to keep running.
"The movement is what I'm seeking. It's enjoyable."
'Surreal Experience
In addition to Cisse's 6 scores on his first game, Ireland has netted 8 in 3 appearances for the side, while George Boyd scored five on his debut match and Lescott, a defender by position, notched a hat-trick in one match up front.
The team are leading of the Top Division with three wins from 3 and a GD of plus nineteen.
Paul Barrow, thirty-eight, who features on the wing for Collegiate OB, faced ex- Latics defender Maynor Figueroa on the weekend - and had to explain his nine-year-old boy who Emile Heskey was.
He has played at 2 World Cups for his country, in addition to playing in over two hundred Premier League games.
"The news was spreading like wildfire they had all these former top-flight players," said the player.
"I think I was a bit starstruck facing him to be honest.
"Also Emile [Heskey] got on and he's got over 60 English appearances.
"Our side held our own for a good twenty mins but then we had a man dismissed and it was hard.
"Our group literally haven't stopped talking about it - I was phoning my mother and sibling on the journey home.
"They were all dead sound, shaking our hands after the match - it was like facing a bunch of normal guys.
"Now we can't wait for the second fixture."
'We'll Still Take the League'
Andy Kirby coaches the opposition vets side, who won the Top Tier championship last season, together with his co-manager.
"We scored one-nil up and had a