Discover the Sunday Division Squad With Nearly Two Thousand Top-Flight Matches
How do you improve a outstanding veteran team who have won back-to-back championships, including a league-cup double with 30 victories from thirty-two games?
Sign a collection of former professionals who have performed at the elite level of club football and international soccer as you target further silverware.
A Manchester team has an amateur vets team with 9 former top-flight players in their active roster.
222 Premier League Goals, 325 Global Caps
Wythenshawe Veterans Over-35s are located in south Manchester and play in the Cheshire-based Veterans Division Top Division.
The squad list this campaign boasts nine ex- top-flight footballers, with a collective 1,801 elite matches.
This star-studded team also boasts 222 Premier League goals and over 320 international caps.
They feature Papiss Cisse, who scored thirty-seven goals in over 100 appearances for Newcastle United after joining them for nine million pounds from German league side SC Freiburg in 2012.
He made his first appearance for the team in their last home-field game versus defending title holders their rivals and scored every one of the six scores in a 6-2 win - including a half-hour first-half triple.
Wythenshawe's squad for this campaign also includes former pros such as English and Liverpool forward Emile Heskey, Hull City and Burnley FC winger George Boyd, Toffees 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.
Collectively, the ex- Premier League players have secured fifteen significant honors and transferred for combined transfer sums of approximately £123 million.
Famous Figures and International Stars
Ireland started playing for the team during preseason this season through close friend and present team player Blake Norton, and the ex- Irish player then asked additional ex-pros, who all compete in a weekly nine-a-side match, to participate.
Former Senegalese forward Niasse, who scored 12 goals in 65 Premier League matches for the Toffees and still goes to their matches at Goodison Park, also made his debut versus Collegiate OB - who are based in the city and use an Blue training kit as their strip.
"A friend Stephen told me 'join and have a game, it's enjoyable'," said the striker.
"After that he told me we were facing a side from the city and the surprise I had when I saw them sporting Everton shirts - I thought this is wrong for me!
"If you still love football and you know you can still do it, wherever you can kick a ball, what are you going to choose?
"Those people who turn up and watch are happy and to give someone's day 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 structure of course."
So great is the squad depth at the club, Niasse had his first game at full-back.
"That's a little unusual but then, I enjoy running and just go forward - I'm not staying back that much," he added.
"I tell my defender 'I'm not staying' and that I'm just going to keep running.
"The running is what I'm after. It's enjoyable."
Unreal Feeling
In addition to the forward's six goals on his first game, Ireland has scored 8 in three games for Wythenshawe, while George Boyd scored five on his first match and Joleon Lescott, a defender by position, scored a triple in one game as a striker.
The team are top of the Top Division with three wins from 3 and a goal difference of +19.
One opponent, thirty-eight, who features on the wing for the opposition, came up against ex- Latics full-back Figueroa on Sunday - and had to explain his nine-year-old boy who Heskey was.
He has appeared at 2 World Cups for his country, in as well as playing in over two hundred top-flight games.
"It was going round like wildfire they had all these former top-flight players," said Barrow.
"I felt I was a bit awestruck playing against Figueroa to be honest.
"Even Heskey came on and he's got 60-odd England caps.
"We held our own 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 way home.
"They were all friendly, shaking our hands after the match - it was like facing a bunch of normal guys.
"Now we can't wait for the return fixture."
'We'll Still Take the League'
The manager manages the opposition veterans team, who won the Premier Tier championship the previous campaign, together with his co-manager.
"Our team went one-nil up and had a