🔗 Share this article

How do you enhance a outstanding experienced side who have claimed back-to-back titles, featuring a double triumph with thirty victories from 32 matches?

Sign a raft of former pro players who have played at the highest tier of club football and international football as you target further trophies.

A Manchester club boasts an amateur vets team with nine ex- Premier League players in their present squad.

222 Premier League Scores, Three Hundred Twenty-Five International Appearances

The team Veterans Over-35s are based in southern the city and play in the Cheshire Vets League Premier Tier.

The lineup this campaign includes nine ex- top-flight players, with a collective 1,801 top-flight games.

This high-profile roster also contains over 220 top division scores and 325 global caps.

The squad feature Papiss Cisse, who scored 37 goals in 117 games for his former club after joining them for nine million pounds from Bundesliga side SC Freiburg in 2012.

Cisse had his first appearance for Wythenshawe in their last home-field game versus reigning title holders their rivals and scored every one of the six goals in a 6-2 win - including a half-hour first-half hat-trick.

Wythenshawe's roster for this season also features former professionals such as English and Liverpool striker Emile Heskey, Hull and Burnley winger George Boyd, Everton forward Oumar Niasse, Wigan defender Maynor Figueroa, City pair Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and top-flight title victors Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.

In total, the ex- top-flight players have won 15 big trophies and transferred for combined transfer sums of about £123 million.

Famous Figures and International Players

Stephen Ireland began playing for the side during preseason this season through good mate and current Wythenshawe player Blake Norton, and the former Irish player then asked other former professionals, who all play in a midweek small-sided match, to join in.

Former Senegalese forward Niasse, who scored 12 goals in 65 top-flight matches for Everton and even now goes to their home games, also made his debut versus the opposition - who are based in Liverpool and wear an Everton training kit as their uniform.

"A friend Stephen said 'join and have a game, it's good fun'," commented the striker.

"After that he told me we were facing a team from Liverpool and the surprise I had when I saw them wearing Blue kits - I say this is wrong for me!

"When you still enjoy football and you feel you can still play, anywhere you can kick a ball, what are you going to do?

"Those people who turn up and see are happy and to make someone's moment if they see us competing there and to pose us questions - it's really about the pleasure of us getting somewhere we can play, with organisation of course."

So great is the bench strength at the club, Niasse made his debut at full-back.

"It's a little unusual but then, I love sprinting and just move inside - I'm not staying back that much," he added.

"I tell my defender 'I'm not staying' and that I'm just going to continue attacking.

"That running is what I'm after. It's good fun."

Dreamlike' Experience

Along with Cisse's 6 scores on his first game, Ireland has netted eight in three appearances for Wythenshawe, while Boyd hit five on his debut appearance and Lescott, a defender by position, scored a triple in one match as a striker.

The team are leading of the Premier Tier with 3 victories from three and a GD of +19.

One opponent, 38, who features on the wing for Collegiate OB, faced ex- Latics full-back Maynor Figueroa on the weekend - and had to tell his young son who Heskey was.

He has appeared at 2 World Cups for his country, in as well as featuring in more than two hundred top-flight matches.

"It was going round like wildfire they had these ex-Premier League stars," said the player.

"I think I was a little awestruck facing Figueroa to be honest.

"Also Heskey came on and he's got over 60 England appearances.

"Our side competed well for a solid 20 minutes but then we had a player dismissed and it was hard.

"Our group really have not stopped talking about it - I was phoning my mother and brother on the way home.

"The opponents were all friendly, shaking our hands after the match - it was like playing a group of regular guys.

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

We Will Still Take the Title'

The manager coaches the opposition vets side, who won the Top Division title last season, together with his co-manager.

"We went one-nil ahead and had a