Discover this Weekend League Team Featuring Nearly Two Thousand Top-Flight Appearances

How do you improve a stellar veteran side that have won consecutive titles, including a double triumph boasting 30 wins from 32 matches?

Recruit a group of ex- professionals that have performed at the highest tier of club football and international soccer as you pursue additional honors.

One Greater Manchester team has an non-professional veterans team with 9 former top-flight footballers in their active squad.

Two Hundred Twenty-Two Top Division Goals, 325 International Appearances

Wythenshawe Veterans Over-35s are located in southern Manchester and play in the Cheshire Vets League Top Tier.

The lineup this season boasts nine former Premier League footballers, with a collective over 1,800 elite matches.

This elite roster also boasts over 220 Premier League scores and over 320 global appearances.

They include one forward, who scored thirty-seven goals in over 100 appearances for his former club after signing for them for nine million pounds from German league side Freiburg in 2012.

Cisse made his first appearance for the team in their last home-field match against reigning title holders their rivals and scored all six scores in a 6-2 win - featuring a half-hour opening period triple.

The roster for this campaign also features ex- pros such as English and Anfield forward Emile Heskey, Hull City and Burnley winger George Boyd, Toffees striker Oumar Niasse, Wigan full-back Maynor Figueroa, City pair Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and top-flight title winners Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.

Collectively, the former Premier League footballers have won fifteen major trophies and transferred for total transfer fees of about £123m.

Household Figures and Global Players

Ireland began turning out for the side in preseason this season through good friend and present Wythenshawe teammate Blake Norton, and the ex- Irish midfielder then invited other ex-pros, who all play in a midweek small-sided match, to participate.

Ex- Senegalese forward Niasse, who scored 12 scores in sixty-five Premier League matches for the Toffees and even now attends their home games, also had his debut versus the opposition - who are based in the city and wear an Everton training kit as their strip.

"A mate Stephen Ireland told me 'come and play, it's good fun'," commented Niasse.

"Then he told me we were playing a side from the city and the shock I had when I saw them sporting Blue kits - I thought this is wrong for me!

"If you still enjoy football and you feel you can still play, anywhere you can kick a ball, what are you going to do?

"Those people who turn up and watch are pleased and to give a moment if they see us playing there and to ask us queries - it's really about the joy of us getting a place we can enjoy football, with organisation of course."

Such is the bench strength at the club, he made his first game at defender.

"It's a little unusual but then, I enjoy sprinting and just move inside - I'm not defending that much," he added.

"I warn my defender 'I'm not hanging back' and that I'm just going to keep attacking.

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

Dreamlike' Experience

Along with Cisse's 6 scores on his first game, Ireland has netted 8 in 3 games for the side, while George Boyd scored 5 on his debut appearance and Lescott, a centre-half by position, notched a triple in one game as a striker.

The team are leading of the Premier Division with three wins from 3 and a goal difference of plus nineteen.

Paul Barrow, 38, who features on the flank for Collegiate OB, faced former Latics full-back Figueroa on the weekend - and had to tell his young boy who Heskey was.

He has played at two World Cups for Honduras, in as well as playing in over two hundred top-flight games.

"It was going round like wildfire they had these ex-Premier League stars," remarked the player.

"I think I was a little starstruck playing against him to be honest.

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

"Our side competed well for a good 20 mins but then we had a player dismissed and it was tough.

"We really haven't stopped chatting about it - I was phoning my mum and sibling on the way home.

"They were all friendly, shaking our hands after the match - it was like facing a group of regular guys.

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

'We'll Still Take the Title'

The manager manages the opposition veterans team, who secured the Top Division title last season, together with Paul Maguire.

"We went one-nil up and had a