🔗 Share this article

What can you enhance a outstanding experienced team who have won consecutive championships, featuring a double triumph boasting thirty wins from thirty-two games?

Recruit a group of former professionals who have competed at the elite level of club football and international football as you aim for further honors.

A Manchester side boasts an amateur vets squad with 9 former Premier League players in their present lineup.

Two Hundred Twenty-Two Top Division Scores, Three Hundred Twenty-Five International Appearances

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

The roster this campaign includes 9 former Premier League players, with a total 1,801 Premier League appearances.

The high-profile team also includes 222 Premier League scores and over 320 international appearances.

The squad include Papiss Cisse, who notched thirty-seven goals in 117 games for his former club after joining them for £9m from German league club Freiburg in January 2012.

Cisse made his first appearance for Wythenshawe in their most recent home-field game against defending title holders their rivals and scored every one of the six scores in a 6-2 victory - featuring a half-hour first-half hat-trick.

The squad for this campaign also features former pros such as England and Anfield forward Emile Heskey, Hull and Burnley midfielder George Boyd, Toffees striker Oumar Niasse, Wigan defender Maynor Figueroa, City pair Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and top-flight title victors Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.

Collectively, the former Premier League footballers have claimed 15 major honors and moved for total transfer sums of around £123 million.

Famous Names and Global Stars

Ireland began turning out for the side in preseason this summer through close friend and present team player Blake Norton, and the ex- Republic of Ireland player then invited additional former professionals, who all compete in a midweek nine-a-side match, to participate.

Ex- Senegalese forward Niasse, who netted twelve scores in sixty-five top-flight matches for the Toffees and even now goes to their home games, also made his first appearance versus the opposition - who are based in the city and use an Blue training kit as their strip.

"A friend Stephen Ireland told me 'come and have a game, it's a laugh'," commented Niasse.

"Then he told me we were facing a side from the city and the shock I had when I saw them wearing Blue kits - I thought this is wrong for me!

"If you still love football and you feel you can still do it, anywhere you can kick a ball, what are you going to do?

"The fans who come and see are pleased and to make someone's day if they watch us playing there and to ask us queries - it's really about the joy of us having a place we can play, with structure of course."

Such is the squad depth at the club, Niasse had his debut at defender.

"That's a little unusual but then, I love sprinting and just go forward - I'm not defending that much," he added.

"I tell my centre-back 'I'm not hanging back' and that I'm just going to continue running.

"The running is what I'm looking for. It's enjoyable."

Dreamlike' Experience

Along with Cisse's 6 scores on his first game, Stephen Ireland has scored eight in three appearances for the side, while Boyd hit five on his debut appearance and Joleon Lescott, a defender by trade, scored a hat-trick in one game as a striker.

The team are top of the Top Division with 3 victories from 3 and a GD of plus nineteen.

Paul Barrow, 38, who plays on the flank for Collegiate OB, came up against ex- Latics defender Figueroa on the weekend - and had to tell his young boy who Emile Heskey was.

Figueroa has played at 2 World Cups for Honduras, in as well as featuring in over two hundred Premier League games.

"The news was going round like wildfire they had all these former top-flight stars," said Barrow.

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

"Also Emile [Heskey] got on and he's got 60-odd English caps.

"We competed well for a solid twenty mins but then we had a man dismissed and it was hard.

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

"The opponents were all dead sound, shaking our hands after the game - it was like playing a bunch of regular guys.

"Now we are eager for the second fixture."

We Will Still Win the Title'

The manager coaches the Collegiate veterans side, who secured the Top Division championship last season, together with his co-manager.

"Our team went 1-0 up and had a