Meet this Sunday League Club Featuring 1,800 Top-Flight Games
How do you improve a outstanding experienced team that have claimed consecutive titles, including a double triumph with thirty victories from thirty-two matches?
Recruit a collection of ex- professionals that have competed at the highest tier of club football and global soccer as you pursue more silverware.
One Manchester side has an amateur vets team with 9 ex- Premier League footballers in their active squad.
222 Top Division Scores, 325 Global Caps
The team Vets Over-35s are located in south Manchester and play in the Cheshire Veterans Division Top Tier.
Their lineup this campaign boasts 9 ex- Premier League footballers, with a total nearly 1,800 Premier League appearances.
The high-profile team also boasts over 220 top division goals and 325 international appearances.
They feature Papiss Cisse, who notched 37 goals in 117 games for his former club after joining them for £9m from German league side Freiburg in 2012.
Cisse made his first appearance for the team in their most recent home-field game versus reigning champions their rivals and netted every one of the six goals in a six-two victory - featuring a 32-minute first-half hat-trick.
Wythenshawe's squad for this campaign also features ex- professionals such as England and Anfield forward Emile Heskey, Hull City and Burnley midfielder George Boyd, Everton striker Oumar Niasse, Wigan Athletic full-back Maynor Figueroa, Manchester City pair Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and top-flight championship winners Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.
Together, the ex- Premier League players have secured fifteen significant honors and transferred for total transfer sums of about £123 million.
Well-Known Names and International Stars
Stephen Ireland started playing for the team in preseason this summer through close friend and present Wythenshawe teammate Blake Norton, and the former Republic of Ireland player then invited additional former professionals, who all compete in a midweek small-sided game, to join in.
Ex- Senegal forward Oumar Niasse, who scored twelve goals in 65 Premier League games for Everton and even now goes to their home games, also had his first appearance against the opposition - who are based in Liverpool and use an Everton warm-up gear as their uniform.
"My friend Stephen told me 'come and have a game, it's a laugh'," commented the striker.
"After that he told me we were playing a side from the city and the shock I had when I saw them wearing Blue kits - I say this is strange for me!
"When 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?
"Those spectators who come and see are happy and to give a day if they watch us playing there and to ask us questions - it's more like the pleasure of us getting a place we can enjoy football, with organisation of course."
So great is the bench strength at the club, he made his debut at full-back.
"That's a bit unusual but then, I enjoy running 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.
"That running is what I'm seeking. It's good fun."
'Surreal Feeling
In addition to Cisse's six scores on debut, Ireland has scored 8 in 3 appearances for Wythenshawe, while Boyd hit five on his first appearance and Lescott, a centre-half by trade, scored a triple in one game as a striker.
Wythenshawe are leading of the Premier Tier with 3 wins from 3 and a goal difference of plus nineteen.
Paul Barrow, 38, who features on the flank for Collegiate OB, faced ex- Wigan full-back Maynor Figueroa on the weekend - and had to explain his nine-year-old son who Heskey was.
Figueroa has appeared at two World Cups for Honduras, in addition to playing in more than two hundred top-flight matches.
"The news was going round like a rumor they had these former top-flight stars," remarked the player.
"I think I was a little awestruck facing Figueroa to be honest.
"Even Emile [Heskey] came on and he's has 60-odd English caps.
"We held our own for a solid 20 mins but then we had a man dismissed and it was hard.
"We literally haven't ceased chatting about it - I was phoning my mum and sibling on the journey home.
"They were all dead sound, shaking our hands after the game - it was like facing a bunch of normal fellas.
"Now we are eager for the second match."
'We'll Still Take the Title'
The manager coaches the Collegiate vets team, who won the Top Division title the previous campaign, along with his co-manager.
"Our team went one-nil up and had a