🔗 Share this article

What do you enhance a excellent experienced side who have won back-to-back titles, including a league-cup double boasting 30 victories from 32 games?

Bring in a collection of former pro players that have performed at the top level of club and international soccer as you aim for additional silverware.

One Manchester club has an non-professional veterans squad with 9 ex- top-flight players in their current roster.

222 Top Division Goals, Three Hundred Twenty-Five International Caps

The team Vets Over-35s are based in south Manchester and play in the Cheshire Veterans Division Premier Tier.

Their roster this season features nine former Premier League players, with a combined 1,801 top-flight matches.

The star-studded roster also contains over 220 top division goals and 325 global caps.

The squad feature one forward, who netted 37 scores in 117 appearances for his former club after moving to them for £9m from Bundesliga club Freiburg in January 2012.

Cisse had his debut for Wythenshawe in their most recent home game against defending champions Collegiate Old Boys and netted all six goals in a six-two victory - including a half-hour opening period hat-trick.

The team for this campaign also features ex- professionals such as England and Liverpool forward Emile Heskey, Hull City and Burnley FC midfielder George Boyd, Everton forward Oumar Niasse, Wigan Athletic defender Maynor Figueroa, Manchester City pair Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and Premier League title winners Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.

Collectively, the former top-flight players have claimed fifteen significant trophies and transferred for total transfer fees of about £123m.

Famous Names and International Players

Stephen Ireland began turning out for the team during pre-season this summer through good friend and current team player Blake Norton, and the ex- Irish midfielder then invited additional former professionals, who all play in a weekly nine-a-side game, to join in.

Former Senegal striker Niasse, who scored twelve scores in 65 top-flight games for the Toffees and even now goes to their matches at Goodison Park, also had his first appearance versus Collegiate OB - who are located in Liverpool and wear an Everton training kit as their strip.

"My friend Stephen said 'join and have a game, it's a laugh'," said the striker.

"After that he informed me we were playing a side from the city and the shock I had when I saw them sporting Everton kits - I say this is strange for me!

"If you still love football and you feel you can still play, wherever you can play, what are you going to choose?

"The spectators who turn up and see are pleased and to make a day if they see us competing there and to pose us queries - it's more like the joy of us having somewhere we can enjoy football, with organisation of course."

So great is the squad depth at the club, he made his first game at defender.

"That's a little unusual but then, I enjoy sprinting and just move inside - I'm not defending that much," he said.

"I warn my centre-back 'I'm not hanging back' and that I'm just going to keep attacking.

"That movement is what I'm looking for. It's good fun."

'Surreal Feeling

Along with Cisse's 6 scores on debut, Stephen Ireland has scored eight in 3 appearances for the side, while George Boyd scored five on his debut appearance and Joleon Lescott, a defender by position, scored a triple in one game as a striker.

Wythenshawe are leading of the Top Tier with three victories from 3 and a goal difference of plus nineteen.

One opponent, thirty-eight, who features on the flank for the opposition, faced former Latics defender Figueroa on the weekend - and had to explain his nine-year-old son who Heskey was.

Figueroa has appeared at two global tournaments for Honduras, in as well as playing in more than 200 Premier League matches.

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

"I felt I was a bit starstruck facing him to be honest.

"Even Emile [Heskey] got on and he's has over 60 England appearances.

"Our side held our own for a solid twenty mins but then we had a player sent off and it was hard.

"Our group literally have not ceased chatting about it - I was phoning my mother and brother on the journey home.

"They were all really nice, shaking our hands after the match - it was like facing a bunch of regular fellas.

"Now we can't wait for the return match."

We Will Still Take the League'

The manager coaches the opposition veterans side, who secured the Top Tier title the previous campaign, together with Paul Maguire.

"Our team went one-nil ahead and had a