🔗 Share this article

How do you improve a stellar veteran squad that have won consecutive titles, featuring a double triumph with 30 victories from thirty-two matches?

Sign a collection of ex- professionals who have performed at the top tier of club football and global football as you aim for more trophies.

One Greater Manchester side has an amateur vets squad with nine former top-flight footballers in their active roster.

Two Hundred Twenty-Two Top Division Goals, 325 Global Caps

The team Veterans Over-35s are situated in southern the city and compete in the Cheshire Veterans Division Top Tier.

The lineup this campaign boasts nine former Premier League footballers, with a total nearly 1,800 top-flight games.

This high-profile squad also boasts over 220 Premier League goals and 325 international caps.

They include Papiss Cisse, who scored thirty-seven scores in 117 appearances for Newcastle United after moving to them for nine million pounds from German league club SC Freiburg in 2012.

Cisse made his first appearance for Wythenshawe in their last home-field match versus reigning champions their rivals and scored all six goals in a 6-2 victory - featuring a half-hour opening period hat-trick.

Wythenshawe's team for this campaign also features ex- pros such as England and Liverpool forward Emile Heskey, Hull City and Burnley winger George Boyd, Everton forward Oumar Niasse, Wigan defender Maynor Figueroa, Manchester City pair Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and Premier League title victors Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.

Together, the former Premier League footballers have won fifteen major honors and transferred for total transfer sums of about £123 million.

Well-Known Names and International Stars

Stephen Ireland started turning out for the side in preseason this summer through close friend and present Wythenshawe player Blake Norton, and the ex- Irish midfielder then asked additional ex-pros, who all play in a weekly small-sided match, to join in.

Former Senegalese striker Niasse, who scored twelve scores in sixty-five Premier League matches for the Toffees and even now goes to their home games, also made his first appearance versus the opposition - who are based in the city and wear an Blue warm-up gear as their uniform.

"A friend Stephen Ireland told me 'come and have a game, it's good fun'," commented Niasse.

"Then he informed me we were playing a side from Liverpool and the shock I had when I saw them sporting Everton shirts - I thought this is wrong for me!

"When you still enjoy football and you feel you can still do it, wherever you can play, what are you going to choose?

"The people who turn up and see are pleased and to make a day if they see us competing there and to pose us queries - it's more like the pleasure of us getting somewhere we can enjoy football, with organisation of course."

Such is the strength in depth at the club, he made his debut at defender.

"It's a bit unusual but then, I love sprinting and just move forward - I'm not staying back that much," he said.

"I tell my centre-back 'I'm not hanging back' and that I'm just going to keep running.

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

Unreal Feeling

Along with Cisse's 6 goals on debut, Stephen Ireland has scored eight in 3 appearances for the side, while George Boyd scored five on his first appearance and Lescott, a defender by position, notched a triple in one game up front.

The team are top of the Premier Tier with three victories from three and a GD of plus nineteen.

One opponent, thirty-eight, who features on the wing for Collegiate OB, came up against former Latics full-back Figueroa on the weekend - and had to tell his nine-year-old boy who Heskey was.

Figueroa has appeared at two global tournaments for Honduras, in addition to playing in over two hundred top-flight matches.

"The news was spreading like wildfire they had these former top-flight players," remarked Barrow.

"I felt I was a bit awestruck facing him to be honest.

"Also Emile [Heskey] got on and he's got 60-odd English appearances.

"Our side held our own for a good 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 sibling on the journey home.

"The opponents were all dead sound, shaking our hands after the match - it was like facing a group of normal fellas.

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

'We'll Still Take the Title'

The manager coaches the Collegiate veterans team, who won the Premier Tier championship the previous campaign, along with his co-manager.

"Our team went 1-0 up and had a