Discover the Weekend Division Club With 1,800 English Top Division Games
What can you improve a excellent experienced side that have won back-to-back titles, including a league-cup double boasting 30 wins from thirty-two games?
Bring in a group of ex- pro players that have performed at the highest level of club and global soccer as you target more honors.
One Manchester team fields an amateur vets team with nine former top-flight players in their current roster.
Two Hundred Twenty-Two Top Division Goals, 325 International Appearances
Wythenshawe Vets Over-35s are based in southern Manchester and play in the Cheshire-based Vets League Premier Tier.
The roster this season includes nine ex- top-flight players, with a collective over 1,800 top-flight appearances.
This high-profile squad also includes 222 top division goals and 325 global caps.
The squad include Papiss Cisse, who netted 37 goals in over 100 games for his former club after signing for them for £9m from German league club Freiburg in 2012.
Cisse made his first appearance for Wythenshawe in their most recent home-field game against defending title holders Collegiate Old Boys and netted every one of the six scores in a 6-2 victory - featuring a half-hour first-half hat-trick.
The roster for this campaign also features ex- professionals such as England and Liverpool striker Emile Heskey, Hull City and Burnley FC winger George Boyd, Everton forward Oumar Niasse, Wigan Athletic defender Maynor Figueroa, City duo Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and Premier League title victors Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.
Collectively, the former top-flight players have claimed 15 big honors and moved for total transfer fees of approximately £123m.
Famous Names and International Stars
Stephen Ireland began turning out for the team in pre-season this summer through good friend and present team player Blake Norton, and the ex- Irish player then asked other former professionals, who all play in a weekly nine-a-side match, to join in.
Ex- Senegalese forward Niasse, who scored twelve scores in sixty-five top-flight matches for the Toffees and even now goes to their home games, also made his debut versus Collegiate OB - who are based in the city and use an Everton training kit as their strip.
"A friend Stephen Ireland told me 'join and play, it's enjoyable'," commented the striker.
"After that he told me we were facing a side from Liverpool and the shock I had when I saw them sporting Everton kits - I thought this is strange for me!
"If you still enjoy the game and you feel you can still do it, anywhere you can kick a ball, what are you going to choose?
"The fans who come and watch are happy and to make a moment if they watch us competing there and to pose us queries - it's more like the joy of us getting a place we can enjoy football, with organisation of course."
So great is the strength in depth at the club, he made his debut at full-back.
"That's a bit unusual but then, I love sprinting and just go inside - I'm not staying back 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 seeking. It's good fun."
'Surreal Feeling
In addition to Cisse's six goals on debut, Ireland has netted eight in three appearances for Wythenshawe, while Boyd hit 5 on his debut match and Lescott, a defender by position, scored a hat-trick in one match as a striker.
Wythenshawe are leading of the Top Division with 3 victories from 3 and a goal difference of +19.
One opponent, 38, who plays on the flank for Collegiate OB, came up against former Wigan full-back Maynor Figueroa on the weekend - and had to tell his nine-year-old son who Emile Heskey was.
He has played at two global tournaments for Honduras, in as well as playing in over two hundred top-flight matches.
"It was going round like a rumor they had all these ex-Premier League players," said the player.
"I think I was a bit starstruck facing him to be honest.
"Even Heskey came on and he's got over 60 England caps.
"Our side held our own for a good 20 mins but then we had a man dismissed and it was hard.
"We literally have not ceased talking about it - I was phoning my mother and sibling on the way home.
"The opponents were all friendly, shaking our hands after the game - it was like facing a group of regular fellas.
"Now we can't wait for the second match."
We Will Still Win the League'
Andy Kirby coaches the Collegiate vets side, who won the Top Division championship the previous campaign, together with his co-manager.
"We went one-nil up and had a