Meet the Sunday League Team With Over 1,800 Top-Flight Matches
What do you enhance a stellar experienced side who have secured back-to-back titles, featuring a league-cup double boasting thirty victories from 32 matches?
Sign a raft of former pro players who have performed at the highest tier of club football and global soccer as you target further silverware.
One Manchester side fields an non-professional vets squad with 9 ex- top-flight footballers in their active squad.
Two Hundred Twenty-Two Premier League Goals, 325 International Caps
The team Vets Over 35s are situated in south the city and play in the Cheshire Veterans Division Premier Tier.
Their lineup this campaign boasts nine ex- top-flight footballers, with a total over 1,800 top-flight matches.
This elite squad also contains 222 top division scores and over 320 international caps.
They include Papiss Cisse, who scored thirty-seven scores in 117 appearances for Newcastle United after moving to them for nine million pounds from German league side SC Freiburg in January 2012.
He made his debut for the team in their last home-field game versus reigning title holders Collegiate Old Boys and scored all six scores in a six-two victory - including a 32-minute first-half triple.
Wythenshawe's squad for this campaign also includes ex- professionals such as England and Liverpool striker Emile Heskey, Hull City and Burnley winger George Boyd, Toffees forward Oumar Niasse, Wigan Athletic defender Maynor Figueroa, City duo Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and Premier League championship winners Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.
Collectively, the former Premier League players have claimed fifteen significant honors and transferred for combined transfer sums of approximately £123 million.
Well-Known Figures and International Stars
Stephen Ireland started turning out for the side during pre-season this season through good mate and present Wythenshawe player Blake Norton, and the ex- Republic of Ireland midfielder then invited additional ex-pros, who all compete in a midweek small-sided game, to join in.
Ex- Senegal forward Oumar Niasse, who netted 12 scores in 65 top-flight games for Everton and even now goes to their matches at Goodison Park, also had his debut versus Collegiate OB - who are based in Liverpool and wear an Everton training kit as their uniform.
"My friend Stephen said 'come and have a game, it's a laugh'," commented the striker.
"After that he informed me we were playing a side from Liverpool and the shock I had when I noticed them sporting Everton kits - I say this is strange for me!
"If you still love football and you know you can still do it, anywhere you can play, what are you going to choose?
"Those fans who turn up and see are pleased and to make a day if they watch us competing there and to pose us queries - it's more like the joy of us having a place we can enjoy football, with organisation of course."
So great is the bench strength at Wythenshawe, he made his first game at defender.
"That's a little different but then, I love sprinting and just go inside - I'm not staying back that much," he added.
"I warn my defender 'I'm not hanging back' and that I'm just going to continue attacking.
"That running is what I'm after. It's good fun."
'Surreal Feeling
Along with Cisse's 6 scores on his first game, Ireland has scored 8 in three games for the side, while George Boyd hit five on his first match and Joleon Lescott, a defender by trade, notched a hat-trick in one match up front.
The team are top of the Premier Tier with three wins from 3 and a GD of plus nineteen.
Paul Barrow, thirty-eight, who features on the wing for the opposition, faced ex- Wigan full-back Maynor Figueroa on the weekend - and had to explain his young boy who Emile Heskey was.
He has played at two global tournaments for Honduras, in as well as featuring in more than two hundred Premier League matches.
"The news was going round like wildfire they had these ex-Premier League players," said the player.
"I think I was a little starstruck playing against Figueroa to be honest.
"Also Heskey came on and he's has over 60 England appearances.
"Our side competed well for a good twenty mins but then we had a man sent off and it was tough.
"Our group literally have not ceased chatting about it - I was phoning my mother and brother on the journey home.
"The opponents were all really nice, shaking our hands after the game - it was like facing a group of normal fellas.
"Now we can't wait for the return fixture."
We Will Still Win the Title'
Andy Kirby manages the Collegiate veterans side, who won the Premier Tier title the previous campaign, together with his co-manager.
"We went 1-0 ahead and had a