Meet the Weekend Division Team Boasting Nearly Two Thousand English Top Division Matches
What can you enhance a excellent veteran side that have claimed back-to-back championships, featuring a double triumph boasting thirty victories from thirty-two games?
Bring in a group of ex- professionals that have performed at the highest level of club football and international football as you pursue more trophies.
One Manchester side boasts an amateur vets squad with nine ex- Premier League footballers in their present roster.
Two Hundred Twenty-Two Premier League Goals, 325 International Appearances
Wythenshawe Veterans Over 35s are located in southern Manchester and compete in the Cheshire-based Vets Division Premier Division.
The lineup this season boasts 9 ex- Premier League footballers, with a combined 1,801 elite matches.
The star-studded roster also includes over 220 Premier League scores and 325 global appearances.
They include one forward, who netted 37 goals in 117 appearances for his former club after joining them for nine million pounds from German league club Freiburg in January 2012.
He made his first appearance for the team in their last home-field game against reigning champions their rivals and scored every one of the six scores in a six-two win - featuring a half-hour opening period triple.
Wythenshawe's squad for this campaign also features ex- professionals such as England and Liverpool forward Emile Heskey, Hull City and Burnley midfielder George Boyd, Everton striker Oumar Niasse, Wigan Athletic defender Maynor Figueroa, City pair Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and top-flight title victors Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.
Collectively, the ex- top-flight players have secured fifteen big honors and moved for total transfer sums of around £123m.
Well-Known Figures and Global Players
Stephen Ireland started turning out for the side in pre-season this summer through close friend and current Wythenshawe teammate Blake Norton, and the ex- Irish midfielder then invited other former professionals, who all compete in a midweek nine-a-side game, to join in.
Former Senegal forward Niasse, who scored twelve goals in sixty-five top-flight games for Everton and still goes to their matches at Goodison Park, also had his debut versus the opposition - who are based in the city and use an Blue warm-up gear as their uniform.
"My friend Stephen said 'join and play, it's enjoyable'," commented Niasse.
"Then he told me we were facing a team from the city and the shock I had when I saw them sporting Blue kits - I thought this is wrong for me!
"When you still enjoy football and you feel you can still do it, anywhere you can play, what are you going to choose?
"The people who come and watch are happy and to make a day if they watch us competing there and to pose us queries - it's more like the pleasure of us having a place we can play, with structure of course."
So great is the strength in depth at Wythenshawe, he had his first game at full-back.
"It's a little unusual but then, I love running and just go forward - I'm not staying back that much," he added.
"I tell my centre-back 'I'm not staying' and that I'm just going to continue attacking.
"The running is what I'm after. It's good fun."
Dreamlike' Experience
Along with Cisse's 6 goals on his first game, Ireland has netted eight in three appearances for Wythenshawe, while Boyd hit 5 on his first match and Joleon Lescott, a defender by position, scored a triple in one match as a striker.
Wythenshawe are leading of the Premier Division with 3 wins from 3 and a GD of plus nineteen.
One opponent, thirty-eight, who plays on the flank for Collegiate OB, came up against former Wigan defender Figueroa on the weekend - and had to explain his nine-year-old son who Heskey was.
He has played at two global tournaments for Honduras, in addition to featuring in over two hundred top-flight matches.
"It was going round like a rumor they had these former top-flight stars," remarked the player.
"I think I was a little starstruck playing against him to be honest.
"Also Emile [Heskey] got on and he's got over 60 English caps.
"We held our own for a solid 20 mins but then we had a man sent off and it was tough.
"We literally haven't stopped talking about it - I was phoning my mother and brother on the way home.
"They were all really nice, shaking our hands after the game - it was like playing a group of normal fellas.
"Now we are eager for the return fixture."
'We'll Still Take the Title'
The manager manages the opposition veterans side, who won the Top Tier championship the previous campaign, along with his co-manager.
"Our team went one-nil up and had a