Meet this Weekend Division Squad Featuring 1,800 English Top Division Matches
What can you enhance a stellar veteran team that have secured consecutive championships, featuring a double triumph boasting thirty victories from 32 matches?
Recruit a group of ex- professionals who have performed at the top tier of club and international soccer as you pursue more honors.
One Manchester team has an non-professional vets team with nine ex- Premier League footballers in their current squad.
222 Top Division Scores, 325 International Caps
The team Veterans Over 35s are based in south Manchester and compete in the Cheshire-based Veterans Division Top Tier.
The roster this season features 9 ex- top-flight footballers, with a collective nearly 1,800 elite games.
This star-studded squad also boasts 222 top division scores and 325 global appearances.
They feature one forward, who netted 37 goals in over 100 appearances for his former club after signing for them for £9m from German league club Freiburg in 2012.
Cisse had his debut for the team in their last home game versus reigning title holders Collegiate Old Boys and scored all six scores in a six-two victory - featuring a half-hour first-half hat-trick.
The squad for this season also features ex- professionals such as English and Liverpool striker Emile Heskey, Hull City and Burnley FC winger George Boyd, Everton striker Oumar Niasse, Wigan Athletic full-back Maynor Figueroa, City duo Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and Premier League title victors Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.
Together, the former Premier League players have secured 15 significant honors and transferred for total transfer fees of about £123m.
Household Names and Global Players
Ireland started turning out for the team during pre-season this season through good mate and current team player Blake Norton, and the former Republic of Ireland player then invited other ex-pros, who all compete in a weekly small-sided match, to join in.
Ex- Senegal forward Oumar Niasse, who netted 12 scores in sixty-five Premier League matches for Everton and still goes to their matches at Goodison Park, also had his first appearance against Collegiate OB - who are located in Liverpool and use an Everton warm-up gear as their uniform.
"My friend Stephen Ireland said 'join and have a game, it's good fun'," said Niasse.
"After that he informed me we were playing a side from Liverpool and the shock I had when I noticed them wearing Blue kits - I thought this is strange for me!
"If you still love the game and you know you can still play, wherever you can kick a ball, what are you going to choose?
"The fans who turn up and watch are pleased and to give someone's moment if they watch us competing there and to pose us questions - it's more like the joy of us having somewhere we can play, with organisation of course."
So great is the squad depth at Wythenshawe, he had his first game at full-back.
"That's a bit unusual but then, I enjoy running and just move forward - I'm not staying back that much," he said.
"I tell my defender 'I'm not staying' and that I'm just going to keep running.
"The movement is what I'm after. It's good fun."
Unreal Scenario
Along with the forward's six scores on debut, Ireland has scored 8 in three appearances for the side, while Boyd scored 5 on his first match and Joleon Lescott, a centre-half by position, scored a hat-trick in one game up front.
Wythenshawe are top of the Premier Tier with 3 wins from 3 and a GD of +19.
Paul Barrow, 38, who plays on the flank for the opposition, faced ex- Wigan full-back Maynor Figueroa on the weekend - and had to tell his young boy who Emile Heskey was.
Figueroa has appeared at two World Cups for his country, in as well as playing in over two hundred Premier League matches.
"It was spreading like a rumor they had all these ex-Premier League stars," said Barrow.
"I think I was a bit awestruck facing him to be honest.
"Also Heskey got on and he's got over 60 England appearances.
"We competed well for a solid twenty mins but then we had a player sent off and it was tough.
"We literally haven't stopped chatting 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 regular guys.
"Now we can't wait for the second fixture."
We Will Still Win the Title'
The manager coaches the Collegiate veterans side, who won the Premier Tier championship the previous campaign, together with Paul Maguire.
"We went one-nil ahead and had a