🔗 Share this article

How can you improve a excellent veteran side who have secured consecutive titles, including a league-cup double boasting 30 wins from thirty-two games?

Bring in a group of former pro players that have competed at the top tier of club football and international football as you target further honors.

One Manchester club has an non-professional vets team with nine ex- Premier League footballers in their current squad.

Two Hundred Twenty-Two Top Division Scores, Three Hundred Twenty-Five Global Appearances

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

The lineup this season includes 9 former top-flight footballers, with a combined over 1,800 elite appearances.

The star-studded team also contains 222 top division scores and 325 international caps.

The squad include one forward, who notched 37 goals in over 100 appearances for Newcastle United after moving to them for nine million pounds from Bundesliga side SC Freiburg in January 2012.

He made his debut for Wythenshawe in their most recent home-field match against defending champions Collegiate Old Boys and scored every one of the six scores in a 6-2 victory - including a 32-minute opening period hat-trick.

The team for this season also includes ex- pros such as English and Liverpool striker Emile Heskey, Hull City and Burnley winger George Boyd, Everton striker Oumar Niasse, Wigan Athletic full-back Maynor Figueroa, Manchester City duo Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and top-flight title victors Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.

Collectively, the ex- top-flight footballers have secured 15 significant trophies and moved for combined transfer sums of around £123m.

Famous Figures and Global Players

Ireland started playing for the team in pre-season this season through close mate and current Wythenshawe teammate Blake Norton, and the former Irish player then asked other ex-pros, who all play in a midweek nine-a-side game, to join in.

Former Senegalese forward Oumar Niasse, who netted twelve scores in 65 top-flight games for Everton and even now attends their home games, also had his first appearance versus Collegiate OB - who are located in the city and use an Everton warm-up gear as their strip.

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

"After that he told me we were facing a team from the city and the shock I had when I saw them sporting Everton kits - I say this is wrong for me!

"If you still enjoy the game and you know you can still do it, wherever you can play, what are you going to do?

"The spectators who come and watch are pleased and to give someone's moment if they watch us competing there and to ask us queries - it's really about the joy of us having somewhere we can enjoy football, with organisation of course."

Such is the squad depth at Wythenshawe, he made his first game at full-back.

"That's a bit different but then, I love sprinting and just go forward - I'm not staying back that much," he said.

"I tell my centre-back 'I'm not staying' and that I'm just going to keep attacking.

"The running is what I'm seeking. It's good fun."

Dreamlike' Feeling

Along with Cisse's 6 scores on his first game, Stephen Ireland has scored eight in three games for the side, while Boyd scored five on his first match and Joleon Lescott, a centre-half by trade, scored a hat-trick in one match up front.

The team are top of the Premier Division with 3 wins from 3 and a GD of +19.

Paul Barrow, thirty-eight, who features on the wing for Collegiate OB, faced former Latics defender Figueroa on Sunday - and had to explain his nine-year-old boy who Emile Heskey was.

Figueroa has appeared at 2 World Cups for Honduras, in as well as featuring in over two hundred Premier League games.

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

"I felt I was a bit starstruck playing against him to be honest.

"Also Emile [Heskey] got on and he's got over 60 English appearances.

"We competed well for a good 20 mins but then we had a man dismissed and it was hard.

"Our group literally have not stopped talking about it - I was phoning my mum and sibling on the journey home.

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

"Now we can't wait for the return match."

'We'll Still Win the League'

The manager coaches the opposition vets side, who secured the Premier Tier title last season, together with Paul Maguire.

"We went one-nil up and had a