🔗 Share this article

How do you improve a excellent experienced side who have secured consecutive championships, including a league-cup double with 30 victories from thirty-two games?

Sign a raft of ex- professionals that have performed at the highest tier of club football and international soccer as you pursue further trophies.

One Greater Manchester side boasts an amateur vets squad with 9 ex- Premier League players in their current lineup.

222 Premier League Scores, Three Hundred Twenty-Five Global Caps

Wythenshawe Vets Over-35s are situated in southern the city and play in the Cheshire-based Veterans Division Premier Tier.

Their roster this campaign features 9 ex- Premier League footballers, with a total nearly 1,800 elite appearances.

The elite team also contains over 220 top division goals and over 320 international caps.

The squad include one forward, who netted 37 scores in 117 games for Newcastle United after signing for them for nine million pounds from Bundesliga side Freiburg in January 2012.

Cisse had his first appearance for the team in their most recent home match versus defending title holders their rivals and scored all six scores in a six-two win - including a half-hour first-half triple.

Wythenshawe's squad for this season also includes ex- pros such as England and Liverpool forward Emile Heskey, Hull City and Burnley winger George Boyd, Everton striker Oumar Niasse, Wigan full-back Maynor Figueroa, Manchester City duo Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and top-flight title victors Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.

In total, the former top-flight players have secured 15 big honors and moved for total transfer sums of about £123m.

Household Names and Global Stars

Ireland started turning out for the side in preseason this season through close friend and current Wythenshawe teammate Blake Norton, and the ex- Irish midfielder then asked additional former professionals, who all compete in a midweek nine-a-side match, to join in.

Former Senegalese forward Oumar Niasse, who netted 12 goals in 65 top-flight matches for Everton and still attends their matches at Goodison Park, also had his first appearance against Collegiate OB - who are based in Liverpool and wear an Blue warm-up gear as their strip.

"My friend Stephen told me 'join and play, it's a laugh'," said Niasse.

"After that he told me we were playing a side from Liverpool and the shock I had when I noticed them wearing Everton shirts - I thought this is strange for me!

"When you still love the game and you feel you can still play, anywhere you can kick a ball, what are you going to do?

"The spectators who come and see are happy and to give someone's moment if they watch us playing there and to pose us questions - it's really about the pleasure of us getting a place we can enjoy football, with structure of course."

So great is the strength in depth at Wythenshawe, Niasse made his debut at full-back.

"It's a bit unusual but then, I enjoy sprinting and just go forward - I'm not defending that much," he said.

"I tell my defender 'I'm not hanging back' and that I'm just going to continue attacking.

"The movement is what I'm after. It's enjoyable."

'Surreal Experience

Along with Cisse's 6 scores on debut, Stephen Ireland has netted 8 in three games for the side, while George Boyd scored 5 on his debut match and Joleon Lescott, a centre-half by trade, scored a hat-trick in one game as a striker.

The team are leading of the Top Tier with 3 victories from 3 and a goal difference of +19.

Paul Barrow, thirty-eight, who features on the flank for Collegiate OB, came up against former Wigan full-back Figueroa on the weekend - and had to explain his nine-year-old son who Heskey was.

Figueroa has played at two global tournaments for Honduras, in as well as featuring in more than two hundred Premier League games.

"It was spreading like a rumor they had these former top-flight players," remarked the player.

"I felt I was a little starstruck playing against Figueroa to be honest.

"Also Heskey came on and he's has over 60 England caps.

"We competed well for a good twenty mins but then we had a player dismissed and it was hard.

"Our group really have not stopped chatting about it - I was calling my mum and sibling on the journey home.

"They were all dead sound, shaking our hands after the game - it was like playing a bunch of regular guys.

"Now we can't wait for the second fixture."

We Will Still Win the Title'

Andy Kirby manages the Collegiate vets team, who won the Top Division title the previous campaign, together with Paul Maguire.

"We scored one-nil ahead and had a