Discover the Weekend Division Squad With 1,800 Premier League Games
What do you boost a excellent experienced team who have won consecutive championships, including a league-cup double with 30 victories from 32 matches?
Sign a group of former professionals that have performed at the elite level of club football and global soccer as you pursue more silverware.
One Greater Manchester side boasts an non-professional veterans team with 9 ex- Premier League players in their active lineup.
Two Hundred Twenty-Two Top Division Scores, Three Hundred Twenty-Five International Appearances
Wythenshawe Veterans Over 35s are based in south the city and play in the Cheshire-based Veterans League Premier Tier.
The squad list this campaign boasts 9 ex- top-flight footballers, with a total nearly 1,800 elite games.
The star-studded team also includes over 220 top division goals and 325 international caps.
They include Papiss Cisse, who scored 37 scores in over 100 games for Newcastle United after moving to them for £9m from Bundesliga side SC Freiburg in January 2012.
He made his debut for the team in their most recent home-field game against reigning champions Collegiate Old Boys and scored all six scores in a six-two win - featuring a 32-minute first-half triple.
Wythenshawe's roster for this season also includes ex- pros such as England and Liverpool forward Emile Heskey, Hull City and Burnley FC midfielder George Boyd, Toffees striker Oumar Niasse, Wigan full-back Maynor Figueroa, City duo Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and top-flight title victors Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.
In total, the former top-flight players have won fifteen major honors and transferred for total transfer sums of around £123 million.
Household Figures and Global Players
Ireland began turning out for the team in pre-season this season through close friend and present Wythenshawe teammate Blake Norton, and the former Irish midfielder then asked additional former professionals, who all play in a weekly small-sided game, to join in.
Ex- Senegal forward Niasse, who netted twelve goals in 65 Premier League games for the Toffees and even now goes to their home games, also had his first appearance against the opposition - who are based in the city and use an Blue warm-up gear as their strip.
"My mate Stephen Ireland told me 'come and have a game, it's enjoyable'," said the striker.
"Then he told me we were facing a team from the city and the shock I had when I saw them sporting Everton shirts - I thought this is wrong for me!
"If you still love the game and you know you can still play, wherever you can play, what are you going to choose?
"The spectators who come and see are pleased and to give a moment if they watch us competing there and to ask us questions - it's more like the joy of us getting somewhere we can play, with organisation of course."
So great is the strength in depth at the club, he had his first game at defender.
"It's a bit unusual but then, I enjoy running and just move forward - I'm not staying back that much," he added.
"I warn my centre-back 'I'm not staying' and that I'm just going to keep attacking.
"That movement is what I'm looking for. It's enjoyable."
'Surreal Feeling
In addition to Cisse's 6 goals on debut, Stephen Ireland has netted 8 in 3 games for the side, while Boyd hit five on his first appearance and Lescott, a centre-half by position, scored a hat-trick in one match up front.
Wythenshawe are top of the Top Tier with three victories from 3 and a goal difference of plus nineteen.
One opponent, thirty-eight, who plays on the flank for Collegiate OB, faced former Latics full-back Figueroa on the weekend - and had to explain his nine-year-old boy who Heskey was.
He has appeared at two World Cups for Honduras, in addition to featuring in more than two hundred Premier League games.
"It was going round like wildfire they had all these ex-Premier League stars," remarked Barrow.
"I think I was a bit starstruck playing against Figueroa to be honest.
"Even Emile [Heskey] got on and he's got over 60 English appearances.
"Our side competed well for a solid twenty mins but then we had a player dismissed and it was hard.
"We literally haven't ceased chatting about it - I was calling my mother and sibling on the way home.
"The opponents were all dead sound, shaking our hands after the match - it was like facing a bunch of normal fellas.
"Now we can't wait for the second fixture."
'We'll Still Win the League'
Andy Kirby manages the opposition vets side, who secured the Top Tier title the previous campaign, along with his co-manager.
"Our team scored one-nil up and had a