Meet this Weekend Division Team With Over 1,800 Top-Flight Games
What do you improve a excellent veteran team who have secured back-to-back titles, featuring a league-cup double with 30 victories from 32 matches?
Bring in a collection of ex- professionals who have performed at the top level of club and international soccer as you target additional silverware.
A Greater Manchester side has an non-professional vets squad with nine ex- top-flight footballers in their active squad.
Two Hundred Twenty-Two Premier League Goals, 325 International Caps
Wythenshawe Vets Over-35s are situated in south the city and compete in the Cheshire-based Vets Division Premier Division.
Their roster this campaign features nine former top-flight players, with a collective over 1,800 Premier League appearances.
The high-profile team also contains over 220 Premier League scores and 325 global caps.
The squad feature one forward, who notched 37 scores in over 100 appearances for his former club after signing for them for £9m from Bundesliga club Freiburg in January 2012.
He made his first appearance for Wythenshawe in their most recent home game against reigning champions their rivals and scored all six goals in a six-two victory - featuring a 32-minute opening period triple.
The roster for this campaign also includes former pros such as English and Liverpool striker Emile Heskey, Hull City and Burnley FC winger George Boyd, Everton forward Oumar Niasse, Wigan Athletic defender Maynor Figueroa, City pair Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and top-flight championship winners Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.
In total, the ex- Premier League footballers have secured fifteen significant trophies and moved for combined transfer fees of about £123m.
Household Names and International Stars
Ireland began turning out for the team in pre-season this season through good friend and present Wythenshawe teammate Blake Norton, and the former Republic of Ireland player then asked additional ex-pros, who all compete in a midweek small-sided game, to participate.
Ex- Senegalese striker Niasse, who netted twelve goals in sixty-five top-flight games for Everton and even now goes to their matches at Goodison Park, also had his first appearance versus Collegiate OB - who are based in Liverpool and use an Blue warm-up gear as their uniform.
"My friend Stephen told me 'come and have a game, it's a laugh'," commented Niasse.
"Then he told me we were facing a side from Liverpool and the surprise I had when I saw them wearing Blue shirts - I thought this is wrong for me!
"If you still enjoy football and you feel you can still do it, anywhere you can kick a ball, what are you going to choose?
"Those spectators who come and watch are pleased and to make someone's moment if they see us competing there and to pose us questions - it's really about the pleasure of us getting somewhere we can play, with structure of course."
So great is the bench strength at Wythenshawe, Niasse had his first game at defender.
"That's a little unusual but then, I enjoy sprinting and just go inside - I'm not staying back that much," he added.
"I tell my centre-back 'I'm not staying' and that I'm just going to keep attacking.
"That movement is what I'm looking for. It's good fun."
'Surreal Experience
In addition to Cisse's 6 scores on debut, Stephen Ireland has scored eight in three appearances for Wythenshawe, while George Boyd hit five on his first appearance and Lescott, a defender by position, scored a hat-trick in one game as a striker.
Wythenshawe are top of the Premier Tier with three victories from 3 and a goal difference of plus nineteen.
Paul Barrow, thirty-eight, who features on the wing for Collegiate OB, faced former Wigan full-back Figueroa on the weekend - and had to tell his young boy who Emile Heskey was.
He has appeared at two World Cups for Honduras, in as well as playing in more than 200 Premier League games.
"It was spreading like a rumor they had these ex-Premier League stars," said Barrow.
"I think I was a little awestruck facing Figueroa to be honest.
"Even Heskey came on and he's got 60-odd England caps.
"We held our own for a good twenty mins but then we had a player dismissed and it was hard.
"Our group really haven't ceased chatting about it - I was phoning my mum and sibling on the journey home.
"The opponents were all friendly, shaking our hands after the match - it was like playing a group of normal fellas.
"Now we can't wait for the return match."
We Will Still Take the Title'
Andy Kirby coaches the Collegiate vets side, who won the Top Tier title the previous campaign, together with his co-manager.
"We went 1-0 ahead and had a