🔗 Share this article

What do you enhance a outstanding veteran side who have won back-to-back championships, featuring a double triumph boasting 30 victories from thirty-two matches?

Sign a raft of former professionals who have competed at the top tier of club and international soccer as you pursue more honors.

One Manchester team boasts an amateur veterans team with nine former top-flight footballers in their current roster.

222 Premier League Goals, 325 International Appearances

Wythenshawe Veterans Over 35s are located in south Manchester and play in the Cheshire-based Veterans League Premier Division.

Their squad list this campaign includes nine ex- Premier League footballers, with a combined over 1,800 top-flight games.

The elite squad also includes 222 top division scores and 325 international appearances.

The squad include Papiss Cisse, who netted 37 goals in 117 games for Newcastle United after moving to them for nine million pounds from Bundesliga side SC Freiburg in 2012.

He had his first appearance for Wythenshawe in their last home-field match against reigning title holders Collegiate Old Boys and scored every one of the six scores in a six-two win - featuring a half-hour first-half hat-trick.

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

Collectively, the former top-flight footballers have won fifteen big trophies and moved for combined transfer fees of approximately £123m.

Well-Known Names and International Stars

Ireland started turning out for the side during pre-season this season through good friend and present Wythenshawe player Blake Norton, and the former Republic of Ireland midfielder then invited additional ex-pros, who all compete in a midweek nine-a-side game, to join in.

Former Senegalese striker Niasse, who scored 12 goals in sixty-five Premier League matches for Everton and even now goes to their matches at Goodison Park, also made his first appearance against Collegiate OB - who are located in Liverpool and wear an Everton warm-up gear as their strip.

"A mate Stephen said 'come and play, it's a laugh'," said the striker.

"Then he informed me we were playing a team from Liverpool and the shock I had when I noticed them sporting Everton kits - I say this is strange for me!

"When you still enjoy the game and you feel you can still play, anywhere you can kick a ball, what are you going to choose?

"Those people who turn up and watch are pleased and to make someone's moment if they watch us competing there and to ask us questions - it's really about the joy of us having somewhere we can enjoy football, with structure of course."

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

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

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

"The movement is what I'm after. It's enjoyable."

Unreal Scenario

Along with Cisse's six scores on his first game, Stephen Ireland has scored eight in three appearances for the side, while Boyd scored 5 on his debut appearance and Joleon Lescott, a centre-half by position, scored a hat-trick in one match as a striker.

Wythenshawe are top of the Premier Division with three victories from three and a GD of +19.

One opponent, thirty-eight, who features on the flank for the opposition, faced former Wigan full-back Maynor Figueroa on the weekend - and had to tell his young son who Heskey was.

Figueroa has appeared at two World Cups for his country, in addition to playing in more than 200 top-flight games.

"It was going round like wildfire they had these former top-flight players," said Barrow.

"I think I was a bit starstruck facing Figueroa to be honest.

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

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

"We literally haven't ceased chatting about it - I was phoning my mum and sibling on the way home.

"They were all really nice, shaking our hands after the game - it was like playing a group of regular fellas.

"Now we are eager for the return fixture."

We Will Still Take the League'

The manager coaches the Collegiate vets team, who secured the Top Division championship last season, together with Paul Maguire.

"We scored one-nil ahead and had a