Discover the Weekend Division Club With 1,800 Top-Flight Appearances
How can you boost a stellar experienced side that have secured back-to-back championships, featuring a double triumph with thirty wins from thirty-two games?
Sign a group of former professionals that have competed at the elite level of club and global football as you pursue further trophies.
One Manchester side fields an amateur veterans team with 9 ex- Premier League footballers in their present roster.
Two Hundred Twenty-Two Top Division Scores, 325 Global Appearances
Wythenshawe Veterans Over-35s are based in south the city and play in the Cheshire-based Vets League Premier Tier.
Their roster this season features nine former top-flight players, with a total nearly 1,800 top-flight games.
This high-profile squad also contains over 220 Premier League goals and 325 global appearances.
The squad include one forward, who netted 37 scores in over 100 appearances for Newcastle United after signing for them for £9m from Bundesliga side Freiburg in 2012.
He had his first appearance for the team in their most recent home-field match versus reigning champions Collegiate Old Boys and netted all six goals in a 6-2 win - including a 32-minute first-half hat-trick.
The roster for this campaign also includes ex- professionals such as English and Liverpool striker Emile Heskey, Hull and Burnley midfielder George Boyd, Toffees striker Oumar Niasse, Wigan Athletic defender Maynor Figueroa, Manchester City pair Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and top-flight title victors Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.
In total, the former top-flight players have claimed fifteen major trophies and moved for combined transfer sums of around £123 million.
Famous Names and International Players
Stephen Ireland began playing for the side in preseason this season through good mate and present team player Blake Norton, and the former Irish midfielder then invited additional ex-pros, who all play in a weekly small-sided match, to join in.
Former Senegalese forward Niasse, who netted twelve goals in 65 top-flight games for the Toffees and still goes to their matches at Goodison Park, also made his debut versus the opposition - who are based in the city and wear an Everton warm-up gear as their strip.
"My mate Stephen Ireland told me 'join and play, it's enjoyable'," commented the striker.
"After that he told me we were playing a team from Liverpool and the surprise I had when I noticed them sporting Everton shirts - I thought this is strange for me!
"When you still love the game and you feel you can still play, wherever you can play, what are you going to do?
"Those spectators who turn up and see are happy and to give someone's moment if they see us playing there and to pose us questions - it's really about the pleasure of us getting somewhere we can play, with structure of course."
Such is the bench strength at the club, Niasse made his debut at full-back.
"That's a bit different but then, I enjoy running and just go forward - I'm not defending that much," he said.
"I warn my centre-back 'I'm not hanging back' and that I'm just going to continue attacking.
"That running is what I'm looking for. It's good fun."
Unreal Experience
Along with the forward's six scores on debut, Stephen Ireland has scored 8 in three appearances for Wythenshawe, while George Boyd scored 5 on his debut match and Joleon Lescott, a centre-half by trade, notched a triple in one game up front.
The team are top of the Premier Division with 3 wins from three and a GD of plus nineteen.
Paul Barrow, 38, who plays on the wing for Collegiate OB, came up against former Wigan defender Maynor Figueroa on the weekend - and had to tell his nine-year-old boy who Emile Heskey was.
Figueroa has appeared at 2 World Cups for his country, in as well as featuring in more than two hundred top-flight matches.
"It was going round like a rumor they had these former top-flight players," said the player.
"I felt I was a little awestruck facing Figueroa to be honest.
"Also Heskey came on and he's got over 60 English caps.
"Our side competed well for a good twenty minutes but then we had a man dismissed and it was hard.
"Our group literally have not stopped talking about it - I was calling my mum and sibling on the journey home.
"They were all really nice, shaking our hands after the match - it was like playing a group of normal guys.
"Now we can't wait for the return fixture."
'We'll Still Take the League'
Andy Kirby manages the opposition veterans side, who won the Top Tier title last season, together with his co-manager.
"We scored one-nil up and had a