Introduce this Weekend League Club Boasting Nearly Two Thousand Top-Flight Appearances
How can you boost a stellar experienced side that have secured back-to-back championships, featuring a league-cup double boasting thirty victories from thirty-two games?
Bring in a raft of former pro players who have played at the top tier of club football and global soccer as you target more honors.
One Manchester side fields an amateur veterans squad with 9 ex- Premier League footballers in their active lineup.
Two Hundred Twenty-Two Top Division Goals, Three Hundred Twenty-Five International Appearances
Wythenshawe Vets Over 35s are situated in south Manchester and play in the Cheshire Vets League Premier Tier.
The roster this campaign boasts nine ex- top-flight players, with a collective over 1,800 Premier League appearances.
This elite roster also includes 222 top division scores and 325 international appearances.
They include one forward, who scored 37 goals in 117 appearances for Newcastle United after joining them for £9m from German league club Freiburg in January 2012.
He made his debut for the team in their last home game versus reigning champions Collegiate Old Boys and netted every one of the six scores in a 6-2 win - featuring a 32-minute opening period hat-trick.
The squad for this campaign also includes ex- professionals such as English and Anfield forward Emile Heskey, Hull City and Burnley midfielder George Boyd, Everton striker Oumar Niasse, Wigan full-back Maynor Figueroa, City duo Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and top-flight title victors Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.
Collectively, the ex- top-flight footballers have claimed fifteen big honors and transferred for total transfer sums of around £123 million.
Household Names and International Stars
Ireland began turning out for the side in pre-season this summer through good friend and current Wythenshawe player Blake Norton, and the ex- Republic of Ireland midfielder then invited additional former professionals, who all compete in a weekly small-sided match, to join in.
Former Senegalese forward Oumar Niasse, who scored twelve scores in sixty-five top-flight matches for the Toffees and still attends their matches at Goodison Park, also had his debut against the opposition - who are located in the city and use an Everton warm-up gear as their strip.
"My friend Stephen told me 'join and have a game, it's a laugh'," commented Niasse.
"Then he told me we were facing a team from Liverpool and the shock I had when I noticed them wearing Everton shirts - I thought this is wrong for me!
"If you still love the game and you feel you can still do it, anywhere you can kick a ball, what are you going to do?
"The people who turn up and watch are happy and to make someone's moment if they watch us competing there and to pose us questions - it's more like the pleasure of us having somewhere we can play, with organisation of course."
So great is the bench strength at the club, he had his debut at full-back.
"That's a bit unusual but then, I enjoy sprinting and just go forward - I'm not staying back that much," he added.
"I warn my centre-back 'I'm not hanging back' and that I'm just going to keep attacking.
"That running is what I'm after. It's good fun."
'Surreal Experience
Along with Cisse's six goals on debut, Stephen Ireland has netted eight in 3 games for Wythenshawe, 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 goal difference of plus nineteen.
Paul Barrow, thirty-eight, who plays on the wing for Collegiate OB, faced ex- Latics full-back Maynor Figueroa on Sunday - and had to tell his nine-year-old son who Heskey was.
Figueroa has played at two World Cups for his country, in as well as playing in more than two hundred top-flight games.
"The news was spreading like a rumor they had these former top-flight stars," remarked Barrow.
"I felt I was a bit starstruck facing Figueroa to be honest.
"Even Emile [Heskey] came on and he's has 60-odd English appearances.
"Our side held our own for a good 20 minutes but then we had a player sent off and it was hard.
"We literally have not ceased talking about it - I was phoning my mum and sibling on the journey home.
"They were all dead sound, shaking our hands after the match - it was like facing a bunch of regular fellas.
"Now we can't wait for the second fixture."
'We'll Still Take the League'
The manager coaches the Collegiate veterans team, who won the Top Tier title the previous campaign, together with his co-manager.
"Our team scored one-nil up and had a