Discover the Weekend League Team Featuring Nearly Two Thousand Top-Flight Games
How can you improve a outstanding veteran team who have claimed consecutive championships, including a league-cup double boasting 30 victories from 32 games?
Sign a raft of ex- pro players who have played at the highest level of club and global football as you pursue additional trophies.
One Greater Manchester side boasts an amateur veterans squad with nine former top-flight footballers in their present lineup.
Two Hundred Twenty-Two Premier League Scores, 325 International Caps
The team Vets Over 35s are based in southern Manchester and play in the Cheshire-based Veterans Division Top Division.
The roster this campaign features nine former Premier League footballers, with a total 1,801 Premier League games.
This high-profile squad also contains over 220 top division goals and over 320 international appearances.
The squad include one forward, who netted thirty-seven goals in over 100 games for Newcastle United after moving to them for £9m from German league side SC Freiburg in 2012.
Cisse had his debut for the team in their last home match against defending champions Collegiate Old Boys and netted all six scores in a six-two victory - including a 32-minute first-half hat-trick.
Wythenshawe's roster for this campaign also includes ex- pros such as English and Liverpool striker Emile Heskey, Hull and Burnley FC winger George Boyd, Everton striker Oumar Niasse, Wigan Athletic full-back Maynor Figueroa, City duo Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and Premier League championship victors Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.
Together, the ex- top-flight footballers have secured 15 significant trophies and moved for total transfer sums of about £123m.
Well-Known Names and International Players
Ireland began playing for the side in preseason this season through good mate and current Wythenshawe player Blake Norton, and the ex- Irish midfielder then asked other former professionals, who all compete in a midweek small-sided game, to participate.
Ex- Senegal forward Oumar Niasse, who scored twelve scores in sixty-five top-flight matches for Everton and still goes to their home games, also made his debut against Collegiate OB - who are based in the city and wear an Everton training kit as their uniform.
"My friend Stephen Ireland told me 'come and have a game, it's good fun'," said Niasse.
"Then he told me we were facing a side from the city and the shock I had when I noticed them sporting Everton kits - I say this is strange for me!
"When you still love football and you know you can still play, anywhere you can play, what are you going to choose?
"The fans who turn up and see are pleased and to make someone's moment if they watch us competing there and to pose us queries - it's more like the pleasure of us getting a place we can play, with structure of course."
Such is the strength in depth at Wythenshawe, Niasse made his debut at full-back.
"That's a bit different but then, I enjoy running and just move forward - I'm not defending that much," he said.
"I warn my centre-back 'I'm not staying' and that I'm just going to keep attacking.
"The movement is what I'm after. It's good fun."
Dreamlike' Feeling
In addition to Cisse's 6 scores on debut, Stephen Ireland has scored eight in 3 games for the side, while George Boyd scored 5 on his debut appearance and Lescott, a centre-half by trade, notched a triple in one game up front.
The team are top of the Premier Tier with 3 wins from three and a goal difference of +19.
Paul Barrow, thirty-eight, who plays on the wing for Collegiate OB, faced former Latics full-back Maynor Figueroa on Sunday - and had to explain his young boy who Heskey was.
Figueroa has appeared at two World Cups for his country, in as well as featuring in more than two hundred Premier League games.
"It was spreading like wildfire they had all these former top-flight players," remarked Barrow.
"I felt I was a little starstruck playing against Figueroa to be honest.
"Even Emile [Heskey] got on and he's has 60-odd English appearances.
"Our side held our own for a good 20 minutes but then we had a player sent off and it was tough.
"Our group literally haven't ceased chatting about it - I was calling my mum and brother on the way home.
"They were all dead sound, shaking our hands after the game - it was like playing a group of normal fellas.
"Now we can't wait for the return fixture."
We Will Still Win the League'
The manager coaches the Collegiate vets team, who won the Premier Division championship last season, together with Paul Maguire.
"We went one-nil ahead and had a