Discover the Sunday League Team With 1,800 Top-Flight Appearances
How can you boost a outstanding veteran squad who have secured back-to-back championships, including a league-cup double with thirty victories from 32 matches?
Sign a group of ex- pro players who have performed at the top level of club football and global soccer as you pursue additional silverware.
A Manchester team fields an non-professional veterans team with 9 former top-flight footballers in their active lineup.
222 Top Division Scores, 325 Global Appearances
The team Vets Over-35s are based in southern Manchester and compete in the Cheshire Vets League Premier Tier.
Their roster this campaign includes nine former top-flight footballers, with a total over 1,800 top-flight appearances.
The elite roster also contains 222 Premier League goals and over 320 international appearances.
The squad include Papiss Cisse, who notched thirty-seven goals in 117 appearances for Newcastle United after joining them for nine million pounds from German league club SC Freiburg in 2012.
Cisse had his debut for Wythenshawe in their last home match versus reigning champions Collegiate Old Boys and scored every one of the six goals in a 6-2 win - featuring a 32-minute opening period hat-trick.
Wythenshawe's team for this campaign also features ex- professionals such as English 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 Premier League championship winners Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.
Collectively, the ex- Premier League players have claimed fifteen big honors and moved for combined transfer fees of about £123 million.
Well-Known Figures and Global Players
Ireland began turning out for the side during pre-season this season through close mate and present team player Blake Norton, and the ex- Irish player then invited additional ex-pros, who all compete in a weekly small-sided game, to participate.
Former Senegal forward Niasse, who netted 12 scores in sixty-five top-flight matches for Everton and even now attends their home games, also made his first appearance against the opposition - who are based in Liverpool and use an Everton warm-up gear as their uniform.
"A friend Stephen told me 'join and play, it's a laugh'," said the striker.
"Then he informed me we were playing a side from Liverpool and the shock I had when I saw them wearing Everton kits - I say this is strange for me!
"If you still love football and you feel you can still do it, wherever you can play, what are you going to choose?
"Those spectators who come and see are pleased and to make a day if they watch us playing there and to pose us questions - it's really about the pleasure of us having a place we can play, with organisation of course."
Such is the bench strength at Wythenshawe, he made his first game at full-back.
"It's a little different but then, I enjoy sprinting and just move inside - I'm not defending that much," he said.
"I tell my defender 'I'm not hanging back' and that I'm just going to keep attacking.
"That running is what I'm looking for. It's good fun."
'Surreal Scenario
In addition to Cisse's six goals on debut, Stephen Ireland has scored 8 in three games for the side, while George Boyd scored 5 on his first appearance and Lescott, a defender by position, notched a hat-trick in one match up front.
The team are top of the Top Tier with three victories from three and a goal difference of +19.
Paul Barrow, 38, who plays on the flank for the opposition, faced former Latics defender Maynor Figueroa on Sunday - and had to tell his nine-year-old boy who Heskey was.
Figueroa has played at 2 global tournaments for Honduras, in as well as featuring in more than two hundred Premier League games.
"It was going round like a rumor they had all these former top-flight stars," said the player.
"I felt I was a little awestruck playing against Figueroa to be honest.
"Also Heskey came on and he's got over 60 England appearances.
"Our side held our own for a solid twenty mins but then we had a man sent off and it was tough.
"Our group really have not ceased talking about it - I was calling my mum and brother on the way home.
"They were all friendly, shaking our hands after the game - it was like playing a group of regular fellas.
"Now we are eager for the second fixture."
We Will Still Take the League'
The manager coaches the Collegiate veterans team, who secured the Top Tier title the previous campaign, along with Paul Maguire.
"Our team scored one-nil up and had a