Meet the Weekend League Squad Featuring Nearly Two Thousand Premier League Appearances
What can you improve a excellent experienced team that have secured consecutive championships, featuring a league-cup double with thirty wins from 32 games?
Sign a raft of former pro players who have played at the elite level of club football and global soccer as you aim for more honors.
A Greater Manchester side fields an non-professional vets team with nine former Premier League players in their present lineup.
Two Hundred Twenty-Two Premier League Goals, Three Hundred Twenty-Five Global Appearances
The team Veterans Over-35s are based in south Manchester and play in the Cheshire-based Veterans Division Premier Division.
The lineup this season boasts nine ex- Premier League players, with a total 1,801 elite games.
This elite team also boasts over 220 Premier League goals and 325 international caps.
They include Papiss Cisse, who scored 37 goals in over 100 appearances for his former club after signing for them for £9m from Bundesliga club SC Freiburg in 2012.
Cisse made his first appearance for Wythenshawe in their most recent home game versus defending champions Collegiate Old Boys and scored all six goals in a six-two win - featuring a half-hour opening period hat-trick.
Wythenshawe's squad for this campaign also features former professionals such as England and Liverpool striker Emile Heskey, Hull City and Burnley winger George Boyd, Everton forward Oumar Niasse, Wigan full-back Maynor Figueroa, City pair Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and Premier League title victors Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.
In total, the former Premier League players have claimed fifteen significant trophies and transferred for total transfer sums of approximately £123 million.
Household Names and Global Stars
Stephen Ireland began playing for the team in pre-season this summer through good friend and current Wythenshawe player Blake Norton, and the former Irish player then invited additional ex-pros, who all compete in a weekly small-sided match, to participate.
Former Senegal forward Niasse, who netted 12 goals in 65 Premier League matches for the Toffees and even now attends their home games, also had his first appearance versus the opposition - who are based in the city and use an Everton training kit as their strip.
"My mate Stephen Ireland said 'come and play, it's a laugh'," commented Niasse.
"Then he told me we were facing a team from Liverpool and the surprise I had when I noticed them sporting Everton shirts - I say this is strange for me!
"If you still enjoy football and you know you can still play, anywhere you can kick a ball, what are you going to do?
"The spectators who come and watch are happy and to make a moment if they see us competing there and to pose us questions - it's really about the pleasure of us having somewhere we can enjoy football, with organisation of course."
Such is the strength in depth at Wythenshawe, he had his first game at defender.
"That's a little unusual but then, I love sprinting and just move inside - I'm not defending that much," he said.
"I warn my centre-back 'I'm not staying' and that I'm just going to keep running.
"The movement is what I'm seeking. It's enjoyable."
Unreal Experience
In addition to Cisse's six goals on his first game, Stephen Ireland has netted 8 in 3 games for the side, while Boyd scored five on his debut match and Joleon Lescott, a centre-half by position, notched a hat-trick in one match as a striker.
The team are leading of the Top Tier with 3 victories from 3 and a GD of plus nineteen.
One opponent, thirty-eight, who features on the wing for Collegiate OB, faced former Wigan defender Maynor Figueroa on the weekend - and had to tell his nine-year-old son who Emile Heskey was.
Figueroa has appeared at 2 global tournaments for his country, in as well as playing in more than two hundred top-flight matches.
"The news was going round like a rumor they had all these former top-flight stars," said Barrow.
"I felt I was a little awestruck facing Figueroa to be honest.
"Even Heskey got on and he's has over 60 England appearances.
"We competed well for a solid twenty minutes but then we had a man sent off and it was hard.
"We really have not ceased chatting about it - I was phoning my mum and sibling on the way home.
"The opponents were all friendly, shaking our hands after the game - it was like playing a bunch of normal guys.
"Now we can't wait for the return fixture."
We Will Still Win the Title'
Andy Kirby manages the Collegiate vets side, who won the Premier Tier title last season, along with his co-manager.
"Our team went one-nil ahead and had a