🔗 Share this article

How do you boost a outstanding veteran side that have claimed consecutive championships, including a league-cup double with 30 wins from 32 matches?

Sign a collection of former pro players that have performed at the elite level of club football and international soccer as you target more trophies.

One Manchester club boasts an amateur veterans squad with nine former top-flight footballers in their present lineup.

222 Top Division Goals, Three Hundred Twenty-Five Global Caps

Wythenshawe Veterans Over 35s are situated in southern Manchester and play in the Cheshire-based Veterans League Top Division.

The lineup this season features 9 former top-flight players, with a collective nearly 1,800 elite games.

The star-studded team also contains 222 Premier League scores and 325 global caps.

The squad include one forward, who netted thirty-seven scores in 117 games for his former club after moving to them for nine million pounds from German league side SC Freiburg in January 2012.

Cisse made his debut for the team in their last home match against reigning title holders Collegiate Old Boys and scored all six scores in a six-two win - including a 32-minute first-half hat-trick.

Wythenshawe's team for this season also features former pros such as English and Anfield forward Emile Heskey, Hull and Burnley winger George Boyd, Everton striker Oumar Niasse, Wigan Athletic full-back Maynor Figueroa, City duo Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and top-flight championship winners Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.

Together, the former Premier League footballers have won fifteen significant honors and transferred for combined transfer fees of about £123m.

Well-Known Names and International Stars

Stephen Ireland began playing for the side during pre-season this summer through good friend and present Wythenshawe player Blake Norton, and the former Irish midfielder then asked other ex-pros, who all play in a weekly small-sided game, to participate.

Former Senegal striker Oumar Niasse, who scored 12 scores in 65 top-flight matches for Everton and even now attends their matches at Goodison Park, also had his debut versus Collegiate OB - who are located in Liverpool and use an Blue training kit as their uniform.

"A friend Stephen Ireland told me 'come and have a game, it's good fun'," commented Niasse.

"Then he told me we were facing a side from Liverpool and the shock I had when I noticed them wearing Everton shirts - I thought this is strange for me!

"If you still enjoy football and you know you can still do it, wherever you can kick a ball, what are you going to do?

"Those spectators who turn up and see are happy and to make someone's moment if they see us playing there and to ask us queries - it's really about the joy of us having somewhere we can enjoy football, with organisation of course."

So great is the bench strength at the club, he had his debut at defender.

"It's a bit unusual but then, I love sprinting and just move inside - 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 running.

"The running is what I'm after. It's enjoyable."

Unreal Feeling

In addition to Cisse's 6 goals on debut, Ireland has scored eight in three games for the side, while George Boyd scored five on his first match and Joleon Lescott, a centre-half by trade, notched a hat-trick in one match up front.

The team are top of the Top Division with three victories from 3 and a goal difference of +19.

One opponent, thirty-eight, who features on the wing for Collegiate OB, faced ex- Wigan defender Figueroa on the weekend - and had to tell his young son who Emile Heskey was.

He has appeared at 2 World Cups for Honduras, in addition to playing in over two hundred top-flight matches.

"It was going round like a rumor they had all these former top-flight stars," remarked the player.

"I felt I was a bit awestruck facing him to be honest.

"Also Emile [Heskey] came on and he's has 60-odd English caps.

"Our side held our own for a solid 20 mins but then we had a man sent off and it was hard.

"We literally have not ceased chatting about it - I was calling my mother and sibling on the way home.

"The opponents were all really nice, shaking our hands after the game - it was like facing a bunch of regular guys.

"Now we are eager for the return fixture."

We Will Still Win the Title'

Andy Kirby manages the Collegiate veterans team, who secured the Top Division title last season, together with his co-manager.

"Our team went 1-0 ahead and had a