Meet the Sunday Division Club Featuring Over 1,800 English Top Division Matches
How can you boost a stellar experienced squad who have won back-to-back championships, including a league-cup double boasting thirty victories from 32 games?
Recruit a raft of former professionals who have performed at the highest tier of club football and global football as you pursue additional honors.
A Manchester team has an non-professional veterans team with 9 former top-flight players in their active squad.
Two Hundred Twenty-Two Top Division Goals, Three Hundred Twenty-Five International Caps
Wythenshawe Vets Over 35s are based in south Manchester and compete in the Cheshire Vets League Premier Tier.
The roster this campaign includes 9 ex- Premier League players, with a total nearly 1,800 top-flight games.
The elite team also includes 222 Premier League scores and 325 global appearances.
They include Papiss Cisse, who notched 37 goals in 117 appearances for his former club after moving to them for nine million pounds from Bundesliga club SC Freiburg in January 2012.
He made his first appearance for the team in their most recent home-field match against defending title holders their rivals and netted every one of the six scores in a six-two win - including a 32-minute first-half hat-trick.
Wythenshawe's team for this campaign also features former professionals such as England and Liverpool forward Emile Heskey, Hull and Burnley midfielder George Boyd, Toffees striker Oumar Niasse, Wigan full-back Maynor Figueroa, City pair Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and Premier League title victors Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.
In total, the ex- top-flight players have secured 15 significant honors and transferred for total transfer fees of around £123 million.
Household Figures and International Stars
Stephen Ireland started turning out for the side in pre-season this season through close mate and present Wythenshawe player Blake Norton, and the former Republic of Ireland player then invited other former professionals, who all compete in a weekly small-sided match, to participate.
Former Senegal forward Niasse, who scored 12 scores in sixty-five Premier League games for the Toffees and still attends their matches at Goodison Park, also had his first appearance versus Collegiate OB - who are located in Liverpool and wear an Everton training kit as their uniform.
"My mate Stephen told me 'come and have a game, it's enjoyable'," said the striker.
"Then he told me we were playing a team from Liverpool and the surprise I had when I saw them sporting Everton kits - I say this is strange for me!
"When you still love football and you know you can still play, anywhere you can play, what are you going to do?
"The fans who come and see are pleased and to give a day if they see us competing there and to ask us queries - it's more like the pleasure of us getting a place we can play, with organisation of course."
Such is the squad depth at the club, he had his first game at full-back.
"That's a little different but then, I love running and just go forward - I'm not staying back 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 good fun."
Unreal Feeling
In addition to the forward's 6 goals on debut, Ireland has netted 8 in 3 appearances for Wythenshawe, while George Boyd hit five on his debut appearance and Joleon Lescott, a centre-half by trade, notched a hat-trick in one match as a striker.
The team are top of the Top Division with three victories from 3 and a GD of plus nineteen.
One opponent, 38, who features on the flank for the opposition, faced ex- Latics defender Maynor Figueroa on the weekend - and had to tell his young son who Heskey was.
Figueroa has played at two World Cups for Honduras, in addition to playing in more than two hundred Premier League games.
"The news was spreading like a rumor they had all these ex-Premier League players," said the player.
"I felt I was a little awestruck facing Figueroa to be honest.
"Even Heskey got on and he's got 60-odd English caps.
"We held our own for a good twenty minutes but then we had a man dismissed and it was hard.
"We really have not stopped talking about it - I was calling my mother and brother on the way home.
"The opponents were all really nice, shaking our hands after the game - it was like facing a bunch of regular fellas.
"Now we can't wait for the second fixture."
'We'll Still Win the League'
Andy Kirby manages the opposition vets team, who secured the Top Division title last season, along with his co-manager.
"Our team went one-nil up and had a