🔗 Share this article

What can you boost a excellent experienced team that have secured back-to-back titles, featuring a league-cup double boasting thirty victories from 32 games?

Recruit a raft of former professionals who have competed at the elite level of club football and international football as you pursue further silverware.

One Manchester side fields an non-professional veterans team with nine ex- Premier League footballers in their present squad.

222 Premier League Scores, Three Hundred Twenty-Five International Appearances

Wythenshawe Veterans Over-35s are situated in southern the city and play in the Cheshire Veterans League Premier Tier.

Their roster this campaign features nine ex- top-flight footballers, with a combined over 1,800 Premier League matches.

This star-studded roster also contains 222 top division goals and over 320 international appearances.

They include Papiss Cisse, who netted 37 scores in over 100 games for Newcastle United after joining them for nine million pounds from Bundesliga club Freiburg in January 2012.

Cisse made his debut for the team in their last home-field game versus reigning champions Collegiate Old Boys and scored every one of the six scores in a six-two win - including a 32-minute first-half hat-trick.

The squad for this season also includes former pros 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 pair Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and top-flight championship winners Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.

In total, the ex- Premier League players have won 15 significant trophies and moved for combined transfer sums of around £123m.

Well-Known Names and Global Players

Stephen Ireland started turning out for the side during pre-season this season through good friend and current team player Blake Norton, and the ex- Irish midfielder then invited other ex-pros, who all compete in a weekly small-sided match, to join in.

Former Senegal striker Oumar Niasse, who scored twelve scores in sixty-five Premier League matches for Everton and still attends their matches at Goodison Park, also had his debut against the opposition - who are located in the city and use an Everton warm-up gear as their uniform.

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

"Then he told me we were playing a side from the city and the surprise I had when I noticed them wearing Everton shirts - I say this is wrong for me!

"If you still enjoy football and you feel you can still play, wherever you can kick a ball, what are you going to choose?

"Those spectators who come and see are pleased and to give someone's day if they watch us playing there and to ask us questions - it's more like the joy of us having a place we can enjoy football, with structure of course."

Such is the bench strength at Wythenshawe, Niasse made his first game at full-back.

"That's a bit different but then, I love running and just go inside - I'm not defending that much," he added.

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

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

'Surreal Experience

Along with Cisse's six scores on debut, Stephen Ireland has scored eight in 3 appearances for Wythenshawe, while George Boyd scored five on his debut match and Joleon Lescott, a defender by trade, notched a hat-trick in one match up front.

Wythenshawe are top of the Premier Tier with three wins from 3 and a goal difference of +19.

Paul Barrow, thirty-eight, who plays on the wing for the opposition, came up against ex- Latics defender Maynor Figueroa on the weekend - and had to explain his young son who Emile Heskey was.

Figueroa has appeared at 2 global tournaments for Honduras, in addition to featuring in more than two hundred Premier League games.

"It was going round like a rumor they had these ex-Premier League stars," said the player.

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

"Even Emile [Heskey] got on and he's has over 60 English appearances.

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

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

"They were all really nice, shaking our hands after the match - it was like facing a group of regular guys.

"Now we can't wait for the second fixture."

We Will Still Win the League'

The manager coaches the opposition veterans side, who won the Top Division championship the previous campaign, along with his co-manager.

"Our team went 1-0 up and had a