🔗 Share this article

What can you enhance a stellar experienced team who have secured back-to-back championships, including a double triumph with 30 victories from thirty-two matches?

Sign a collection of former pro players that have performed at the highest level of club football and international football as you target further silverware.

One Manchester side boasts an amateur vets team with 9 ex- top-flight players in their active squad.

222 Top Division Scores, Three Hundred Twenty-Five Global Caps

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

Their lineup this season boasts nine ex- top-flight players, with a combined 1,801 elite games.

This high-profile squad also contains 222 top division scores and 325 international appearances.

They include Papiss Cisse, who notched 37 scores in 117 games for his former club after moving to them for £9m from Bundesliga side Freiburg in 2012.

He made his debut for the team in their most recent home match against defending champions their rivals and scored every one of the six scores in a 6-2 win - including a 32-minute first-half hat-trick.

The squad for this campaign also includes former professionals such as English and Liverpool striker Emile Heskey, Hull and Burnley FC midfielder George Boyd, Toffees striker Oumar Niasse, Wigan full-back Maynor Figueroa, City pair Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and Premier League championship winners Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.

Together, the ex- top-flight footballers have won fifteen big honors and moved for total transfer sums of about £123 million.

Household Figures and Global Stars

Stephen Ireland began turning out for the team during preseason this summer through close mate and current Wythenshawe player Blake Norton, and the former Republic of Ireland midfielder then invited other ex-pros, who all compete in a weekly small-sided match, to participate.

Ex- Senegal forward Oumar Niasse, who scored 12 scores in sixty-five top-flight matches for the Toffees and even now attends their home games, also had his debut against the opposition - who are based in the city and wear an Blue training kit as their strip.

"My friend Stephen Ireland said 'come and play, it's enjoyable'," said Niasse.

"Then he told me we were playing a team 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 love football and you feel you can still do it, anywhere you can kick a ball, what are you going to do?

"The people who turn up and see are pleased and to give a moment if they watch us playing there and to pose us questions - it's more like the pleasure of us having somewhere we can play, with structure of course."

So great is the bench strength at Wythenshawe, he made his debut at defender.

"That's a little different but then, I enjoy sprinting and just move inside - I'm not staying back that much," he said.

"I warn my defender 'I'm not staying' and that I'm just going to keep running.

"The movement is what I'm looking for. It's good fun."

'Surreal Experience

In addition to the forward's 6 goals on debut, Stephen Ireland has scored 8 in 3 appearances for the side, while Boyd scored 5 on his debut appearance and Lescott, a centre-half by trade, notched a hat-trick in one match as a striker.

The team are leading of the Premier Tier with 3 wins from 3 and a goal difference of plus nineteen.

One opponent, 38, who plays on the wing for the opposition, faced ex- Wigan defender Maynor Figueroa on the weekend - and had to explain his young son who Heskey was.

He has appeared at 2 World Cups for his country, in addition to playing in over two hundred top-flight games.

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

"I felt I was a bit awestruck playing against Figueroa to be honest.

"Also Heskey came on and he's has over 60 English appearances.

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

"Our group really have not stopped talking about it - I was calling my mum and sibling on the journey home.

"The opponents were all really nice, shaking our hands after the game - it was like facing a bunch of regular guys.

"Now we are eager for the return match."

'We'll Still Win the League'

Andy Kirby manages the opposition veterans side, who secured the Premier Division championship the previous campaign, together with Paul Maguire.

"Our team scored 1-0 ahead and had a