🔗 Share this article

What can you enhance a stellar veteran team that have claimed consecutive titles, featuring a league-cup double with 30 wins from thirty-two matches?

Recruit a collection of former professionals who have played at the highest level of club football and global football as you aim for more trophies.

A Greater Manchester team fields an amateur veterans squad with nine former top-flight footballers in their active lineup.

222 Premier League Goals, 325 Global Caps

The team Veterans Over 35s are situated in south Manchester and play in the Cheshire Vets Division Premier Tier.

Their roster this campaign includes 9 ex- top-flight footballers, with a collective nearly 1,800 top-flight games.

The high-profile team also boasts over 220 Premier League scores and over 320 international caps.

The squad feature Papiss Cisse, who notched 37 goals in over 100 appearances for Newcastle United after signing for them for £9m from Bundesliga side SC Freiburg in 2012.

Cisse made his debut for the team in their last home-field game against defending title holders their rivals and scored every one of the six scores in a six-two victory - featuring a 32-minute first-half triple.

The team for this season also features ex- pros such as English and Anfield forward Emile Heskey, Hull City and Burnley midfielder George Boyd, Everton striker Oumar Niasse, Wigan Athletic defender Maynor Figueroa, Manchester City duo Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and Premier League title victors Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.

Together, the ex- Premier League footballers have won fifteen significant trophies and moved for total transfer sums of approximately £123m.

Household Figures and Global Players

Stephen Ireland began turning out for the side in pre-season this summer through close mate and current team player Blake Norton, and the former Irish player then asked other ex-pros, who all play in a weekly nine-a-side game, to participate.

Former Senegalese forward Oumar Niasse, who netted twelve scores in 65 top-flight matches for the Toffees and even now goes to their matches at Goodison Park, also made his first appearance versus Collegiate OB - who are located in Liverpool and wear an Everton warm-up gear as their uniform.

"A mate Stephen Ireland said 'come and have a game, it's enjoyable'," said the striker.

"Then he told me we were facing a team from Liverpool and the surprise I had when I noticed them wearing Blue shirts - I thought this is wrong for me!

"When you still love the game and you feel you can still do it, wherever you can play, what are you going to do?

"The spectators who turn up and see are pleased and to make someone's day if they see us competing there and to ask us questions - it's more like the joy of us having a place we can play, with structure of course."

Such is the bench strength at Wythenshawe, he had his first game at defender.

"It's a little different but then, I enjoy sprinting and just go forward - I'm not defending that much," he added.

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

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

Dreamlike' Experience

In addition to the forward's 6 scores on debut, Stephen Ireland has scored eight in three games for the side, while Boyd scored 5 on his debut appearance and Joleon Lescott, a centre-half by trade, notched a hat-trick in one game as a striker.

Wythenshawe are leading of the Top Tier with 3 victories from 3 and a goal difference of +19.

Paul Barrow, thirty-eight, who plays on the wing for Collegiate OB, faced former Latics full-back Figueroa on the weekend - and had to tell his young boy who Emile Heskey was.

Figueroa has appeared at 2 global tournaments for Honduras, in as well as featuring in more than two hundred Premier League matches.

"It was spreading like wildfire they had all these ex-Premier League stars," said the player.

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

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

"We held our own for a solid twenty mins but then we had a player sent off and it was tough.

"Our group really haven't stopped chatting about it - I was calling my mother and brother on the way home.

"They were all dead sound, shaking our hands after the match - it was like playing a group of normal guys.

"Now we are eager for the return fixture."

'We'll Still Win the League'

Andy Kirby coaches the opposition vets side, who secured the Premier Tier title last season, together with Paul Maguire.

"Our team scored one-nil up and had a