Meet the Sunday League Club Boasting Nearly Two Thousand Premier League Games
What do you boost a stellar veteran side that have won consecutive titles, featuring a league-cup double boasting thirty victories from 32 games?
Sign a raft of former pro players who have played at the elite tier of club and global football as you pursue more honors.
One Manchester side fields an amateur veterans team with 9 former Premier League footballers in their active roster.
222 Top Division Scores, Three Hundred Twenty-Five International Caps
The team Vets Over 35s are situated in southern Manchester and play in the Cheshire-based Veterans League Top Tier.
The squad list this season boasts 9 former top-flight footballers, with a combined 1,801 Premier League games.
This high-profile team also contains 222 Premier League goals and over 320 global appearances.
They feature Papiss Cisse, who notched thirty-seven goals in 117 appearances for Newcastle United after signing for them for £9m from Bundesliga club SC Freiburg in 2012.
Cisse had his first appearance for the team in their most recent home-field game versus defending title holders Collegiate Old Boys and scored every one of the six goals in a six-two victory - featuring a half-hour first-half hat-trick.
Wythenshawe's squad for this season also includes former pros such as English and Liverpool forward Emile Heskey, Hull and Burnley winger George Boyd, Everton forward Oumar Niasse, Wigan defender Maynor Figueroa, City pair Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and Premier League title victors Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.
Collectively, the ex- top-flight players have secured fifteen major trophies and transferred for combined transfer sums of approximately £123m.
Well-Known Figures and International Players
Ireland began playing for the team in preseason this summer through good mate and current Wythenshawe teammate Blake Norton, and the former Irish player then asked other ex-pros, who all play in a weekly nine-a-side match, to join in.
Ex- Senegalese forward Niasse, who scored 12 goals in sixty-five top-flight games for Everton and even now goes to their home games, also made his debut versus Collegiate OB - who are based in the city and wear an Everton warm-up gear as their uniform.
"A friend Stephen Ireland told me 'come and play, it's a laugh'," said Niasse.
"After that he informed me we were playing a team from Liverpool and the shock I had when I noticed them wearing Everton kits - I thought this is wrong for me!
"If you still enjoy football and you feel you can still play, anywhere you can play, what are you going to choose?
"The people who come and see are happy and to give a moment if they see us playing there and to pose us queries - it's really about the pleasure of us getting somewhere we can enjoy football, with structure of course."
So great is the squad depth at Wythenshawe, Niasse made his debut at full-back.
"That's a bit unusual but then, I love sprinting and just go inside - I'm not staying back that much," he said.
"I tell my defender 'I'm not staying' and that I'm just going to keep attacking.
"That running is what I'm after. It's good fun."
Unreal Experience
In addition to Cisse's 6 scores on his first game, Stephen Ireland has netted eight in 3 games for the side, while Boyd scored 5 on his first appearance and Joleon Lescott, a centre-half by position, notched a triple in one match as a striker.
Wythenshawe are leading of the Top Tier with three wins from three and a GD of plus nineteen.
Paul Barrow, 38, who plays on the flank for the opposition, came up against ex- Latics defender Figueroa on the weekend - and had to tell his young son who Heskey was.
Figueroa has appeared at 2 global tournaments for Honduras, in as well as featuring in over two hundred Premier League games.
"The news was spreading like wildfire they had all these former top-flight players," said the player.
"I felt I was a bit starstruck facing Figueroa to be honest.
"Also Heskey came on and he's has 60-odd English caps.
"We competed well for a good twenty mins but then we had a man sent off and it was hard.
"Our group really have not stopped talking 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 bunch of normal guys.
"Now we are eager for the return match."
We Will Still Take the League'
Andy Kirby coaches the Collegiate vets side, who won the Top Tier championship the previous campaign, along with Paul Maguire.
"We scored one-nil ahead and had a