Meet the Weekend Division Squad With Nearly Two Thousand Top-Flight Games
What do you enhance a stellar experienced squad who have claimed back-to-back championships, including a league-cup double boasting 30 victories from 32 matches?
Bring in a raft of ex- professionals who have performed at the elite level of club and international soccer as you pursue further honors.
A Manchester club fields an amateur vets team with nine former top-flight footballers in their active roster.
Two Hundred Twenty-Two Premier League Scores, 325 International Caps
The team Vets Over-35s are situated in south the city and play in the Cheshire-based Vets Division Premier Division.
Their lineup this campaign features nine former top-flight players, with a collective 1,801 top-flight games.
The star-studded team also includes over 220 top division goals and 325 international appearances.
The squad include one forward, who scored thirty-seven goals in 117 appearances for Newcastle United after joining them for £9m from German league club Freiburg in 2012.
He made his first appearance for Wythenshawe in their most recent home-field match versus reigning title holders Collegiate Old Boys and netted all six scores in a 6-2 win - featuring a 32-minute opening period hat-trick.
The team for this campaign also includes ex- professionals such as English and Anfield striker Emile Heskey, Hull and Burnley winger George Boyd, Toffees forward Oumar Niasse, Wigan full-back Maynor Figueroa, Manchester City duo Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and top-flight title winners Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.
In total, the former Premier League footballers have secured fifteen significant trophies and transferred for total transfer fees of about £123m.
Famous Names and International Players
Ireland began playing for the side in preseason this season through close friend and current team teammate Blake Norton, and the ex- Irish player then asked other ex-pros, who all compete in a midweek small-sided match, to participate.
Former Senegalese striker Oumar Niasse, who scored 12 scores in 65 Premier League games for Everton and still attends their home games, also made his debut against Collegiate OB - who are based in Liverpool and use an Everton warm-up gear as their strip.
"A friend Stephen told me 'join and play, it's good fun'," commented the striker.
"Then he told me we were playing a team from the city and the shock I had when I noticed them sporting Blue shirts - I thought this is wrong for me!
"When you still enjoy the game and you feel you can still play, wherever you can kick a ball, what are you going to choose?
"The people who turn up and see are happy and to make a moment if they watch us competing there and to ask us questions - it's more like the joy of us having somewhere we can enjoy football, with organisation of course."
So great is the strength in depth at the club, Niasse made his first game at full-back.
"It's a bit different but then, I love sprinting and just move forward - I'm not defending that much," he said.
"I warn my centre-back 'I'm not staying' and that I'm just going to keep attacking.
"That movement is what I'm after. It's enjoyable."
Dreamlike' Experience
In addition to the forward's 6 scores on his first game, Ireland has netted 8 in 3 appearances for the side, while George Boyd hit five on his first match and Lescott, a centre-half by trade, notched a hat-trick in one match up front.
The team are top of the Top Tier with 3 wins from three and a GD of plus nineteen.
Paul Barrow, thirty-eight, who features on the flank for Collegiate OB, came up against ex- Latics full-back Maynor Figueroa on Sunday - and had to explain his nine-year-old boy who Heskey was.
Figueroa has played at 2 global tournaments for his country, in as well as featuring in over 200 top-flight matches.
"The news was spreading like a rumor they had these ex-Premier League stars," remarked the player.
"I felt I was a bit awestruck facing Figueroa to be honest.
"Even Emile [Heskey] got on and he's has 60-odd England caps.
"We held our own for a good 20 mins but then we had a man sent off and it was tough.
"We literally haven't ceased talking about it - I was phoning my mother 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 are eager for the return match."
We Will Still Take the League'
The manager coaches the opposition vets side, who won the Premier Tier title last season, together with Paul Maguire.
"We scored 1-0 ahead and had a