Discover the Weekend League Team Featuring Nearly Two Thousand English Top Division Appearances
What can you enhance a excellent experienced team who have secured consecutive championships, including a double triumph with thirty wins from thirty-two games?
Recruit a collection of former pro players that have performed at the highest tier of club football and international soccer as you target further honors.
A Greater Manchester club boasts an amateur veterans team with nine ex- Premier League players in their active squad.
Two Hundred Twenty-Two Premier League Goals, Three Hundred Twenty-Five Global Caps
Wythenshawe Veterans Over-35s are located in southern Manchester and compete in the Cheshire-based Veterans League Top Tier.
The squad list this campaign features 9 former top-flight footballers, with a collective 1,801 elite appearances.
The star-studded team also contains over 220 Premier League goals and over 320 international caps.
They include one forward, who netted 37 goals in 117 games for his former club after joining them for £9m from Bundesliga club SC Freiburg in 2012.
Cisse had his first appearance for the team in their most recent home match versus reigning champions Collegiate Old Boys and scored every one of the six scores in a 6-2 victory - featuring a half-hour opening period triple.
Wythenshawe's squad for this campaign also includes former professionals such as England and Liverpool striker Emile Heskey, Hull City and Burnley midfielder George Boyd, Toffees forward Oumar Niasse, Wigan Athletic 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 Premier League footballers have won fifteen significant honors and moved for total transfer sums of around £123 million.
Household Figures and Global Stars
Ireland began playing for the side during preseason this season through good friend and current Wythenshawe teammate Blake Norton, and the former Irish player then invited other ex-pros, who all play in a midweek nine-a-side match, to join in.
Ex- Senegalese forward Niasse, who scored twelve scores in sixty-five Premier League matches for the Toffees and even now goes to their matches at Goodison Park, also had his first appearance against Collegiate OB - who are based in Liverpool and use an Everton warm-up gear as their strip.
"A mate Stephen said 'come and play, it's enjoyable'," said the striker.
"Then he informed me we were facing a side from Liverpool and the surprise I had when I saw them sporting Blue kits - I say this is strange for me!
"If you still love the game and you feel you can still do it, wherever you can kick a ball, what are you going to choose?
"Those people who come and see are happy and to give someone's moment if they watch us playing there and to pose us queries - it's more like the pleasure of us getting a place we can enjoy football, with structure of course."
Such is the squad depth at Wythenshawe, Niasse had his first game at defender.
"It's a bit unusual but then, I enjoy sprinting and just move inside - I'm not staying back that much," he added.
"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 enjoyable."
Unreal Experience
In addition to the forward's 6 scores on his first game, Ireland has netted eight in three appearances for Wythenshawe, while Boyd hit five on his first match and Lescott, a centre-half by position, scored a hat-trick in one match up front.
The team are leading of the Top Division with three victories from 3 and a GD of +19.
Paul Barrow, 38, who plays on the wing for the opposition, came up against former Latics defender Figueroa on the weekend - and had to explain his nine-year-old boy who Heskey was.
He has played at two World Cups for Honduras, in addition to featuring in more than two hundred Premier League games.
"The news was going round like wildfire they had these ex-Premier League players," remarked the player.
"I felt I was a bit awestruck facing Figueroa to be honest.
"Even Heskey got on and he's has over 60 England caps.
"We held our own for a good 20 minutes but then we had a player dismissed and it was hard.
"Our group literally haven't stopped chatting about it - I was phoning my mum and sibling on the journey home.
"The opponents were all really nice, shaking our hands after the match - it was like playing a group of normal fellas.
"Now we can't wait for the second fixture."
We Will Still Take the League'
Andy Kirby manages the Collegiate veterans side, who won the Top Division title last season, along with Paul Maguire.
"We scored 1-0 up and had a