Meet this Sunday League Club Boasting 1,800 Premier League Games
How do you boost a excellent veteran side who have claimed consecutive titles, featuring a double triumph with 30 victories from 32 games?
Bring in a raft of former professionals who have performed at the top tier of club and global football as you target further trophies.
One Greater Manchester team fields an amateur vets squad with nine former top-flight footballers in their present roster.
222 Premier League Scores, Three Hundred Twenty-Five International Appearances
The team Veterans Over 35s are located in southern Manchester and play in the Cheshire Vets League Top Division.
The roster this campaign features nine ex- top-flight footballers, with a collective nearly 1,800 Premier League appearances.
The elite team also contains over 220 top division goals and 325 global caps.
They include Papiss Cisse, who netted thirty-seven goals in 117 games for Newcastle United after joining them for nine million pounds from German league side SC Freiburg in 2012.
He had his first appearance for the team in their most recent home game against defending title holders Collegiate Old Boys and netted every one of the six goals in a 6-2 win - featuring a 32-minute first-half hat-trick.
The roster for this season also features ex- professionals such as England and Anfield forward Emile Heskey, Hull and Burnley FC midfielder George Boyd, Toffees forward 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.
In total, the former Premier League players have secured fifteen significant honors and moved for combined transfer sums of approximately £123m.
Well-Known Figures and Global Players
Stephen Ireland began playing for the side in pre-season this summer through close friend and current Wythenshawe player Blake Norton, and the former Republic of Ireland player then asked additional former professionals, who all compete in a weekly nine-a-side match, to join in.
Ex- Senegal forward Oumar Niasse, who netted twelve scores in sixty-five Premier League matches for the Toffees and even now attends their matches at Goodison Park, also had his debut versus Collegiate OB - who are based in the city and use an Everton warm-up gear as their strip.
"My mate Stephen told me 'come and have a game, it's good fun'," commented Niasse.
"Then he informed me we were facing a team from Liverpool and the shock I had when I noticed them sporting Blue 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 play, what are you going to do?
"Those fans who turn up and see are pleased and to give someone's moment if they watch us playing there and to ask us questions - it's more like the pleasure of us getting somewhere we can enjoy football, with structure of course."
So great is the strength in depth at the club, Niasse made his first game at full-back.
"That's a bit different but then, I love sprinting and just move forward - I'm not defending that much," he added.
"I warn my centre-back 'I'm not hanging back' and that I'm just going to keep attacking.
"That running is what I'm after. It's good fun."
'Surreal Scenario
In addition to the forward's six goals on his first game, Stephen Ireland has netted eight in 3 appearances for the side, while Boyd hit 5 on his first match and Lescott, a defender by position, notched a triple in one game as a striker.
The team are leading of the Premier Division with 3 wins from three and a GD of plus nineteen.
Paul Barrow, thirty-eight, who plays on the flank for the opposition, faced former Wigan full-back Maynor Figueroa on Sunday - and had to tell his nine-year-old boy who Heskey was.
Figueroa has played at 2 World Cups for his country, in as well as playing in over two hundred Premier League matches.
"It was spreading like wildfire they had these former top-flight stars," said Barrow.
"I think I was a bit awestruck playing against him to be honest.
"Even Heskey got on and he's got 60-odd England appearances.
"Our side held our own for a good twenty mins but then we had a man dismissed and it was hard.
"We literally have not ceased chatting about it - I was phoning my mum and sibling on the journey home.
"They were all really nice, shaking our hands after the game - it was like playing a bunch of normal fellas.
"Now we can't wait for the return fixture."
We Will Still Win the Title'
The manager manages the opposition vets side, who secured the Top Tier championship last season, together with his co-manager.
"Our team went one-nil up and had a