Meet the Sunday League Team Featuring 1,800 Top-Flight Games
How do you improve a excellent experienced side that have won consecutive titles, including a league-cup double boasting 30 victories from thirty-two matches?
Sign a raft of ex- professionals that have played at the highest tier of club football and international soccer as you pursue more silverware.
A Greater Manchester team fields an amateur veterans team with 9 former Premier League footballers in their active squad.
Two Hundred Twenty-Two Premier League Scores, 325 Global Appearances
Wythenshawe Vets Over-35s are located in south Manchester and play in the Cheshire Vets Division Premier Division.
Their squad list this campaign features nine former top-flight players, with a collective over 1,800 top-flight matches.
This elite team also boasts 222 top division scores and over 320 global appearances.
The squad feature Papiss Cisse, who scored 37 scores in 117 appearances for his former club after moving to them for nine million pounds from German league side Freiburg in January 2012.
He had his first appearance for Wythenshawe in their last home match versus defending champions Collegiate Old Boys and scored all six scores in a six-two victory - featuring a 32-minute opening period hat-trick.
Wythenshawe's squad for this campaign also includes former professionals such as English and Anfield striker Emile Heskey, Hull and Burnley winger George Boyd, Everton striker Oumar Niasse, Wigan full-back Maynor Figueroa, City duo Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and top-flight championship winners Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.
Collectively, the ex- Premier League players have claimed 15 major honors and moved for combined transfer fees of about £123m.
Household Figures and Global Players
Stephen Ireland started turning out for the team during pre-season this season through close mate and present Wythenshawe teammate Blake Norton, and the ex- Irish player then asked other ex-pros, who all play in a midweek small-sided match, to join in.
Former Senegalese forward Niasse, who scored twelve goals in sixty-five Premier League matches for Everton and still goes to their matches at Goodison Park, also made his first appearance against Collegiate OB - who are located in Liverpool and wear an Everton warm-up gear as their strip.
"A mate Stephen Ireland said 'join and play, it's a laugh'," said 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 say this is wrong for me!
"If you still love the game and you know you can still play, anywhere you can play, what are you going to do?
"Those people who turn up and see are happy and to give someone's moment if they see us playing there and to pose us queries - it's really about the joy of us having a place we can play, with organisation of course."
Such is the squad depth at the club, Niasse made his debut at full-back.
"That's a little unusual but then, I love sprinting and just go inside - I'm not staying back that much," he added.
"I tell my defender 'I'm not hanging back' and that I'm just going to continue attacking.
"That running is what I'm looking for. It's good fun."
'Surreal Experience
In addition to the forward's six goals on debut, Stephen Ireland has netted eight in 3 appearances for Wythenshawe, while Boyd hit 5 on his first appearance and Lescott, a defender by trade, notched a hat-trick in one game as a striker.
Wythenshawe are top of the Premier Tier with 3 wins from three and a GD of plus nineteen.
Paul Barrow, thirty-eight, who plays on the flank for Collegiate OB, faced former Wigan defender Figueroa on Sunday - and had to tell his nine-year-old son who Heskey was.
He has appeared at two global tournaments for Honduras, in as well as playing in more than two hundred top-flight games.
"It was spreading like a rumor they had all these former top-flight stars," said the player.
"I felt I was a bit awestruck playing against Figueroa to be honest.
"Even Heskey came on and he's got over 60 English appearances.
"Our side held our own for a good twenty minutes but then we had a man sent off and it was tough.
"Our group really haven't stopped talking about it - I was calling my mother and sibling on the journey home.
"They were all dead sound, shaking our hands after the match - it was like playing a bunch of normal guys.
"Now we are eager for the second match."
'We'll Still Win the Title'
Andy Kirby coaches the opposition vets side, who won the Top Tier title last season, along with Paul Maguire.
"Our team went one-nil ahead and had a