Introduce the Weekend Division Squad Featuring Nearly Two Thousand Top-Flight Matches
How can you enhance a outstanding veteran team that have secured back-to-back titles, featuring a double triumph with 30 victories from thirty-two matches?
Recruit a raft of ex- professionals who have competed at the top level of club and international soccer as you aim for more honors.
One Greater Manchester side has an non-professional vets squad with nine former Premier League players in their active lineup.
Two Hundred Twenty-Two Top Division Goals, 325 International Caps
Wythenshawe Vets Over 35s are based in south the city and play in the Cheshire-based Veterans League Top Division.
The lineup this season features nine ex- top-flight players, with a total over 1,800 top-flight matches.
This elite squad also includes over 220 Premier League scores and 325 international appearances.
The squad feature Papiss Cisse, who scored 37 scores in over 100 appearances for Newcastle United after joining them for £9m from German league side SC Freiburg in January 2012.
He made his debut for Wythenshawe in their last home-field match versus defending title holders Collegiate Old Boys and scored all six goals in a six-two victory - including a 32-minute first-half hat-trick.
Wythenshawe's team for this campaign also includes former professionals such as England and Liverpool forward Emile Heskey, Hull City and Burnley FC winger George Boyd, Toffees forward Oumar Niasse, Wigan full-back Maynor Figueroa, Manchester City pair Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and top-flight championship victors Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.
Collectively, the ex- Premier League players have won 15 big honors and moved for combined transfer sums of about £123 million.
Famous Figures and International Stars
Ireland started playing for the side during preseason this season through good mate and present team player Blake Norton, and the former Republic of Ireland player then invited additional former professionals, who all compete in a weekly small-sided game, to join in.
Former Senegalese forward Oumar Niasse, who netted twelve scores in sixty-five top-flight matches for the Toffees and still attends their matches at Goodison Park, also had his debut against Collegiate OB - who are based in the city and wear an Blue training kit as their strip.
"My friend Stephen Ireland told me 'come and play, it's a laugh'," said Niasse.
"After that he told me we were facing a team from the city and the surprise I had when I noticed them wearing Blue kits - I thought this is strange for me!
"When you still enjoy football and you feel you can still play, wherever you can play, what are you going to do?
"The fans who turn up and watch are happy and to make someone's moment if they watch us playing there and to pose us questions - it's really about the joy of us getting somewhere we can play, with structure of course."
So great is the bench strength at Wythenshawe, Niasse had his first game at defender.
"It's a little different but then, I enjoy running and just move forward - I'm not staying back that much," he said.
"I tell my centre-back 'I'm not hanging back' and that I'm just going to keep attacking.
"That movement is what I'm after. It's enjoyable."
'Surreal Experience
In addition to Cisse's six scores on his first game, Ireland has netted 8 in three games for Wythenshawe, while George Boyd hit five on his first match and Lescott, a defender by position, notched a hat-trick in one game as a striker.
The team are leading of the Premier Tier with three wins from 3 and a goal difference of plus nineteen.
One opponent, thirty-eight, who plays on the flank for the opposition, faced ex- Latics full-back Maynor Figueroa on the weekend - and had to tell his young boy who Emile Heskey was.
He has appeared at two global tournaments for Honduras, in as well as featuring in more than two hundred top-flight matches.
"The news was going round like wildfire they had all these ex-Premier League stars," said the player.
"I felt I was a bit starstruck playing against Figueroa to be honest.
"Also Emile [Heskey] came on and he's has over 60 England appearances.
"Our side competed well for a good 20 minutes but then we had a man sent off and it was tough.
"We really have not ceased talking about it - I was phoning my mum and sibling on the way home.
"The opponents were all dead sound, shaking our hands after the game - it was like facing a bunch of regular guys.
"Now we can't wait for the second match."
We Will Still Win the League'
The manager coaches the Collegiate veterans team, who won the Top Tier title the previous campaign, along with his co-manager.
"Our team went one-nil up and had a