🔗 Share this article

How can you enhance a outstanding veteran squad who have secured consecutive titles, featuring a league-cup double boasting thirty wins from thirty-two matches?

Sign a raft of ex- pro players that have played at the elite tier of club and international soccer as you target further honors.

A Manchester club fields an amateur veterans team with nine ex- top-flight players in their active squad.

Two Hundred Twenty-Two Premier League Goals, 325 International Caps

The team Vets Over-35s are located in southern Manchester and compete in the Cheshire Vets Division Premier Division.

Their roster this season features 9 ex- Premier League footballers, with a collective over 1,800 top-flight appearances.

This high-profile team also contains 222 top division goals and over 320 international appearances.

The squad include one forward, who netted 37 goals in over 100 games for his former club after moving to them for nine million pounds from German league side SC Freiburg in January 2012.

He made his first appearance for the team in their last home match against defending champions Collegiate Old Boys and scored all six goals in a six-two win - including a 32-minute first-half hat-trick.

Wythenshawe's team for this campaign also features former pros such as English and Liverpool striker Emile Heskey, Hull City and Burnley midfielder George Boyd, Toffees striker Oumar Niasse, Wigan Athletic defender Maynor Figueroa, Manchester City pair Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and Premier League championship winners Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.

In total, the ex- top-flight players have secured 15 big honors and transferred for total transfer sums of approximately £123m.

Well-Known Names and Global Players

Ireland started turning out for the team in preseason this summer through good friend and current Wythenshawe player Blake Norton, and the ex- Republic of Ireland player then asked additional ex-pros, who all compete in a midweek nine-a-side match, to participate.

Former Senegal forward Oumar Niasse, who scored twelve scores in sixty-five top-flight matches for Everton and even now goes to their home games, also had his debut against Collegiate OB - who are located in Liverpool and use an Blue training kit as their strip.

"A friend Stephen Ireland said 'come and have a game, it's good fun'," commented the striker.

"After that he told me we were facing a team from Liverpool and the surprise I had when I noticed them wearing Everton kits - I thought this is wrong for me!

"When you still enjoy the game and you know you can still do it, anywhere you can kick a ball, what are you going to choose?

"The people who turn up and see are pleased and to give a day if they see us playing there and to ask us questions - it's more like the pleasure of us getting a place we can enjoy football, with structure of course."

So great is the strength in depth at Wythenshawe, Niasse made his first game at full-back.

"That's a little unusual but then, I enjoy sprinting and just move forward - I'm not defending that much," he said.

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

"The movement is what I'm looking for. It's good fun."

Unreal Experience

In addition to the forward's 6 goals on his first game, Ireland has netted 8 in three appearances for Wythenshawe, while George Boyd scored five on his first appearance and Joleon Lescott, a centre-half by position, notched a triple in one match up front.

The team are leading of the Premier Tier with 3 wins from three and a GD of plus nineteen.

One opponent, 38, who features on the flank for Collegiate OB, came up against ex- Latics defender Figueroa on Sunday - and had to tell his young boy who Emile Heskey was.

He has appeared at two World Cups for his country, in addition to playing in over two hundred Premier League matches.

"It was spreading like wildfire they had these ex-Premier League stars," said Barrow.

"I think I was a bit awestruck facing Figueroa to be honest.

"Even Emile [Heskey] came on and he's has over 60 English caps.

"We held our own for a good twenty mins but then we had a man sent off and it was tough.

"Our group literally haven't ceased talking about it - I was calling my mother and brother on the way home.

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

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

We Will Still Win the Title'

The manager manages the opposition veterans team, who secured the Premier Division title the previous campaign, together with Paul Maguire.

"Our team scored one-nil ahead and had a