Meet the Sunday League Squad With 1,800 English Top Division Matches
What can you improve a excellent veteran team that have won back-to-back titles, including a double triumph boasting thirty wins from 32 games?
Recruit a group of former professionals that have competed at the highest level of club football and global soccer as you aim for further honors.
One Manchester side fields an non-professional vets squad with 9 former Premier League footballers in their present squad.
Two Hundred Twenty-Two Top Division Scores, Three Hundred Twenty-Five Global Appearances
The team Veterans Over 35s are based in southern the city and compete in the Cheshire-based Veterans League Premier Tier.
The squad list this campaign features nine former top-flight footballers, with a combined nearly 1,800 top-flight appearances.
The star-studded team also includes 222 top division goals and over 320 global appearances.
They include Papiss Cisse, who scored 37 scores in over 100 games for Newcastle United after moving to them for nine million pounds from German league club Freiburg in January 2012.
Cisse had his debut for Wythenshawe in their most recent home-field match against reigning champions Collegiate Old Boys and netted all six scores in a six-two win - including a 32-minute opening period triple.
The roster for this campaign also includes ex- professionals such as England and Liverpool striker Emile Heskey, Hull City and Burnley winger George Boyd, Everton striker Oumar Niasse, Wigan full-back Maynor Figueroa, Manchester City pair Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and Premier League championship victors Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.
Together, the ex- Premier League footballers have secured 15 major trophies and transferred for combined transfer sums of approximately £123m.
Famous Figures and Global Stars
Ireland started turning out for the team during pre-season this summer through good mate and current team teammate Blake Norton, and the former Irish player then invited other ex-pros, who all compete in a midweek nine-a-side game, to participate.
Ex- Senegalese forward Oumar Niasse, who scored 12 goals in sixty-five top-flight games for Everton and still goes to their home games, also had his debut against the opposition - who are based in Liverpool and wear an Everton warm-up gear as their uniform.
"My mate Stephen Ireland said 'come and play, it's enjoyable'," commented Niasse.
"Then he told me we were playing a team from Liverpool and the surprise I had when I saw them sporting Everton shirts - I say this is wrong for me!
"If you still love the game and you feel you can still do it, anywhere you can play, what are you going to do?
"The spectators who turn up and watch are happy and to make someone's day if they watch us playing there and to pose us queries - it's really about the pleasure of us getting somewhere we can enjoy football, with structure of course."
So great is the bench strength at Wythenshawe, he made his debut at full-back.
"It's a little different but then, I love running and just go inside - I'm not defending that much," he said.
"I tell my centre-back 'I'm not hanging back' and that I'm just going to keep running.
"That movement is what I'm after. It's enjoyable."
Dreamlike' Feeling
Along with the forward's six goals on his first game, Ireland has scored 8 in 3 appearances for Wythenshawe, while George Boyd scored five on his first match and Lescott, a defender by position, scored a triple in one match up front.
The team are top of the Top Tier with three wins from 3 and a goal difference of +19.
Paul Barrow, thirty-eight, who features on the flank for the opposition, faced former Wigan defender Figueroa on Sunday - and had to explain his young son who Emile Heskey was.
He has played at two global tournaments for Honduras, in addition to playing in over two hundred top-flight matches.
"It was spreading like wildfire they had these former top-flight stars," remarked Barrow.
"I think I was a little starstruck playing against Figueroa to be honest.
"Even Emile [Heskey] got on and he's got 60-odd English appearances.
"We held our own for a good twenty minutes but then we had a player dismissed and it was tough.
"We literally haven't ceased chatting about it - I was phoning my mother and sibling on the way home.
"The opponents were all really nice, shaking our hands after the match - it was like facing a bunch of regular fellas.
"Now we can't wait for the return match."
We Will Still Win the League'
Andy Kirby manages the opposition veterans side, who won the Premier Tier championship last season, together with his co-manager.
"We went 1-0 ahead and had a