🔗 Share this article

How can you improve a excellent experienced team who have claimed consecutive titles, featuring a double triumph boasting 30 victories from thirty-two games?

Bring in a raft of former professionals that have played at the elite tier of club football and global football as you pursue additional honors.

One Manchester club boasts an non-professional veterans team with nine former Premier League footballers in their present roster.

222 Top Division Goals, 325 Global Appearances

The team Veterans Over-35s are based in south the city and play in the Cheshire-based Vets League Top Tier.

The lineup this season features 9 former top-flight players, with a combined nearly 1,800 elite matches.

The elite roster also includes over 220 Premier League goals and over 320 international appearances.

The squad include one forward, who netted 37 scores in over 100 games for his former club after joining them for nine million pounds from Bundesliga club SC Freiburg in 2012.

He had his debut for the team in their last home-field match against defending champions their rivals and netted all six scores in a 6-2 win - including a 32-minute first-half hat-trick.

The team for this campaign also features ex- pros such as England and Liverpool forward Emile Heskey, Hull City and Burnley FC midfielder George Boyd, Everton striker Oumar Niasse, Wigan defender Maynor Figueroa, Manchester City pair Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and Premier League championship winners Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.

In total, the ex- top-flight footballers have claimed 15 big trophies and moved for combined transfer sums of about £123m.

Well-Known Figures and Global Stars

Ireland started turning out for the side in pre-season this summer through good mate and present team teammate Blake Norton, and the ex- Irish midfielder then invited other ex-pros, who all compete in a midweek nine-a-side match, to join in.

Former Senegalese striker Niasse, who netted 12 scores in 65 top-flight games for Everton and still attends their home games, also made his first appearance against Collegiate OB - who are located in Liverpool and wear an Everton training kit as their uniform.

"A mate Stephen Ireland said 'join and play, it's a laugh'," said the striker.

"After that he informed me we were facing a side from the city and the surprise I had when I noticed them sporting Everton shirts - I thought this is strange for me!

"If you still enjoy the game and you feel you can still play, anywhere you can play, what are you going to do?

"Those spectators who come and watch are happy and to give a day if they see us competing there and to ask us questions - it's more like the pleasure of us having a place we can enjoy football, with organisation of course."

So great is the strength in depth at the club, he made his debut at full-back.

"It's a bit different but then, I love running 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 continue running.

"The movement is what I'm looking for. It's good fun."

'Surreal Experience

In addition to the forward's 6 goals on debut, Stephen Ireland has netted eight in three games for the side, while Boyd scored 5 on his debut appearance and Lescott, a defender by trade, notched a hat-trick in one game up front.

Wythenshawe are leading of the Top Tier with three 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 full-back Figueroa on the weekend - and had to explain his nine-year-old boy who Emile Heskey was.

He has played at two World Cups for Honduras, in as well as playing in over two hundred Premier League matches.

"The news was spreading like wildfire they had these former top-flight players," said the player.

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

"Also Heskey got on and he's has 60-odd England appearances.

"Our side held our own for a good 20 mins but then we had a player sent off and it was hard.

"We really have not stopped talking about it - I was calling my mum and brother on the way home.

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

"Now we can't wait for the second fixture."

'We'll Still Take the League'

Andy Kirby coaches the opposition vets side, who secured the Top Division title last season, together with Paul Maguire.

"Our team went 1-0 ahead and had a