🔗 Share this article

How can you enhance a stellar veteran team that have claimed consecutive championships, including a double triumph with thirty wins from thirty-two games?

Sign a group of ex- professionals who have performed at the elite level of club football and international football as you pursue more honors.

One Greater Manchester club boasts an non-professional veterans squad with nine ex- top-flight footballers in their active squad.

222 Premier League Goals, Three Hundred Twenty-Five International Caps

The team Vets Over 35s are located in south Manchester and play in the Cheshire-based Veterans League Top Division.

Their lineup this season boasts 9 ex- Premier League players, with a collective nearly 1,800 Premier League matches.

The high-profile squad also contains 222 Premier League goals and 325 international appearances.

They include one forward, who notched thirty-seven scores in over 100 appearances for Newcastle United after signing for them for £9m from Bundesliga club Freiburg in 2012.

He made his first appearance for the team in their most recent home-field match against defending title holders Collegiate Old Boys and netted every one of the six scores in a six-two victory - including a 32-minute first-half hat-trick.

The roster for this season also features ex- professionals such as England and Liverpool forward Emile Heskey, Hull and Burnley winger George Boyd, Toffees forward Oumar Niasse, Wigan full-back Maynor Figueroa, Manchester City duo Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and top-flight title winners Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.

Collectively, the former top-flight footballers have secured 15 significant trophies and moved for total transfer fees of around £123m.

Well-Known Figures and International Stars

Ireland started playing for the team during preseason this season through close friend and current team teammate Blake Norton, and the ex- Irish player then invited other former professionals, who all play in a midweek nine-a-side game, to join in.

Former Senegal striker Niasse, who scored 12 scores in sixty-five Premier League games for Everton and even now attends their matches at Goodison Park, also made his first appearance against the opposition - who are based in the city and use an Everton warm-up gear as their strip.

"My mate Stephen said 'join and have a game, it's a laugh'," said Niasse.

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

"When you still enjoy football and you know you can still do it, wherever you can play, what are you going to choose?

"Those people who turn up and watch are happy and to give a moment if they see us playing there and to pose us questions - it's really about the joy of us getting a place we can play, with organisation of course."

Such is the squad depth at Wythenshawe, Niasse made his first game at full-back.

"It's a bit different but then, I love sprinting and just move inside - I'm not defending that much," he said.

"I tell my centre-back 'I'm not hanging back' and that I'm just going to continue attacking.

"The running is what I'm after. It's good fun."

Unreal Scenario

Along with Cisse's six goals on debut, Stephen Ireland has scored eight in three appearances for the side, while George Boyd scored 5 on his first appearance and Lescott, a centre-half by position, notched a triple in one game as a striker.

Wythenshawe are top of the Top Division with three victories from 3 and a goal difference of plus nineteen.

One opponent, thirty-eight, who features on the wing for Collegiate OB, faced ex- Wigan defender Figueroa on the weekend - and had to explain his nine-year-old boy who Heskey was.

He has played at two World Cups for Honduras, in as well as playing in over two hundred top-flight games.

"It was going round like wildfire they had these former top-flight players," said Barrow.

"I felt I was a little starstruck playing against him to be honest.

"Even Emile [Heskey] got on and he's got 60-odd English appearances.

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

"We literally haven't stopped talking about it - I was phoning my mother and sibling on the journey home.

"The opponents were all friendly, shaking our hands after the game - it was like facing a group of regular guys.

"Now we are eager for the return fixture."

'We'll Still Win the League'

Andy Kirby manages the opposition veterans side, who secured the Top Division championship last season, together with his co-manager.

"Our team scored one-nil up and had a