Meet this Weekend League Club Featuring Nearly Two Thousand Premier League Appearances
How can you improve a outstanding veteran team that have won consecutive titles, featuring a double triumph boasting 30 victories from thirty-two matches?
Bring in a group of ex- professionals who have played at the elite tier of club football and global football as you aim for more silverware.
One Greater Manchester team fields an non-professional vets team with 9 former top-flight players in their current squad.
222 Top Division Scores, Three Hundred Twenty-Five Global Appearances
Wythenshawe Vets Over-35s are located in southern the city and play in the Cheshire Vets Division Top Tier.
Their lineup this season includes 9 ex- Premier League footballers, with a collective nearly 1,800 top-flight appearances.
The elite squad also boasts 222 top division scores and over 320 global caps.
They include Papiss Cisse, who scored 37 goals in over 100 appearances for his former club after joining them for £9m from German league club Freiburg in 2012.
Cisse had his first appearance for the team in their most recent home-field match versus reigning title holders Collegiate Old Boys and scored every one of the six goals in a six-two win - featuring a 32-minute opening period hat-trick.
The squad for this season also includes former pros such as English and Anfield forward Emile Heskey, Hull City and Burnley FC midfielder George Boyd, Toffees striker Oumar Niasse, Wigan Athletic full-back Maynor Figueroa, Manchester City duo Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and top-flight title victors Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.
Collectively, the ex- Premier League players have secured 15 big honors and transferred for total transfer sums of about £123m.
Famous Names and International Players
Ireland began playing for the team in preseason this season through close friend and current team teammate Blake Norton, and the former Republic of Ireland player then asked other former professionals, who all compete in a weekly small-sided game, to participate.
Former Senegal forward Oumar Niasse, who netted 12 goals in 65 top-flight matches for the Toffees and even now attends their matches at Goodison Park, also had his first appearance against Collegiate OB - who are based in Liverpool and use an Everton training kit as their strip.
"My mate Stephen said 'come and have a game, it's enjoyable'," said the striker.
"Then he told me we were facing a side from the city and the surprise I had when I saw them wearing Blue shirts - I say this is wrong for me!
"If you still enjoy football and you feel you can still play, wherever you can play, what are you going to choose?
"Those fans who come and see are pleased and to give a moment if they see us competing there and to ask us questions - it's more like the pleasure of us getting a place we can enjoy football, with organisation of course."
So great is the strength in depth at the club, he had his first game at defender.
"That's a bit unusual but then, I love running and just go forward - I'm not defending that much," he said.
"I tell my defender 'I'm not staying' and that I'm just going to continue attacking.
"The movement is what I'm looking for. It's good fun."
Unreal Feeling
In addition to Cisse's 6 goals on debut, Stephen Ireland has scored eight in 3 games for Wythenshawe, while Boyd scored 5 on his first appearance and Joleon Lescott, a centre-half by position, scored a hat-trick in one game up front.
The team are top of the Premier Division with three victories from three and a goal difference of +19.
One opponent, 38, who plays on the flank for Collegiate OB, came up against ex- Wigan full-back Maynor Figueroa on Sunday - and had to explain his nine-year-old son who Heskey was.
Figueroa has appeared at two World Cups for Honduras, in addition to featuring in over two hundred Premier League matches.
"It was spreading like a rumor they had these former top-flight players," remarked Barrow.
"I felt I was a bit awestruck playing against Figueroa to be honest.
"Also Emile [Heskey] got on and he's has 60-odd English caps.
"We competed well for a solid 20 mins but then we had a player sent off and it was hard.
"We really haven't 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 playing a group of regular guys.
"Now we are eager for the return fixture."
'We'll Still Win the Title'
The manager coaches the opposition vets team, who won the Top Tier championship last season, along with Paul Maguire.
"Our team went 1-0 ahead and had a