Meet the Weekend League Club Featuring 1,800 Premier League Games
How can you enhance a stellar experienced team that have secured consecutive championships, featuring a league-cup double boasting thirty wins from thirty-two games?
Recruit a collection of former professionals that have performed at the elite tier of club football and international soccer as you aim for further trophies.
A Manchester team has an non-professional veterans squad with nine former Premier League players in their present lineup.
222 Premier League Scores, 325 Global Appearances
Wythenshawe Veterans Over 35s are based in southern the city and compete in the Cheshire-based Veterans League Top Tier.
Their roster this season features nine ex- Premier League players, with a combined 1,801 Premier League matches.
This high-profile squad also contains 222 top division goals and over 320 global appearances.
They feature one forward, who notched 37 goals in over 100 appearances for his former club after joining them for £9m from Bundesliga side SC Freiburg in January 2012.
Cisse made his first appearance for the team in their last home game against defending champions their rivals and scored all six goals in a 6-2 win - including a 32-minute opening period hat-trick.
The squad for this season also includes former pros such as England and Liverpool striker Emile Heskey, Hull and Burnley winger George Boyd, Toffees striker Oumar Niasse, Wigan full-back Maynor Figueroa, City pair Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and Premier League title victors Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.
Collectively, the former Premier League footballers have claimed fifteen big honors and moved for combined transfer fees of about £123m.
Well-Known Figures and Global Stars
Stephen Ireland began playing for the team during pre-season this season through close mate and present team teammate Blake Norton, and the former Republic of Ireland player then asked other former professionals, who all play in a midweek small-sided game, to participate.
Former Senegal striker Niasse, who netted 12 goals in sixty-five Premier League games for the Toffees and even now attends their matches at Goodison Park, also made his first appearance versus the opposition - who are located in Liverpool and wear an Everton training kit as their uniform.
"A friend Stephen told me 'join and play, it's a laugh'," commented Niasse.
"After that he told me we were playing a team from Liverpool 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 know you can still play, wherever you can play, what are you going to do?
"Those spectators who come and watch are pleased and to give someone's day if they see us competing there and to pose us questions - it's really about the pleasure of us getting a place we can enjoy football, with organisation of course."
So great is the squad depth at the club, he had his first game at full-back.
"It's a little different but then, I love running and just move forward - 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 running.
"That running is what I'm after. It's good fun."
Dreamlike' Scenario
Along with the forward's 6 scores on his first game, Stephen Ireland has scored eight in three games for Wythenshawe, while Boyd scored 5 on his debut match and Joleon Lescott, a defender by position, scored a triple in one game as a striker.
The team are top of the Top Tier with 3 wins from three and a goal difference of plus nineteen.
Paul Barrow, thirty-eight, who features on the flank for the opposition, faced ex- Latics defender Maynor Figueroa on the weekend - and had to tell his nine-year-old boy who Heskey was.
Figueroa has appeared at 2 World Cups for his country, in as well as featuring in more than two hundred Premier League matches.
"It was going round like wildfire they had these former top-flight players," remarked Barrow.
"I felt I was a little starstruck facing him to be honest.
"Also 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 man dismissed and it was tough.
"Our group really haven't stopped talking about it - I was phoning my mother and sibling on the journey home.
"The opponents were all really nice, shaking our hands after the match - it was like playing a bunch of regular guys.
"Now we can't wait for the second match."
'We'll Still Win the Title'
The manager coaches the Collegiate vets side, who won the Top Division championship last season, together with Paul Maguire.
"We went one-nil ahead and had a