Meet the Weekend Division Team Boasting 1,800 Top-Flight Appearances

What do you enhance a stellar veteran side who have claimed consecutive titles, featuring a double triumph with thirty wins from 32 matches?

Bring in a raft of ex- pro players that have played at the highest tier of club football and international soccer as you target more silverware.

One Greater Manchester club has an amateur vets squad with nine former Premier League footballers in their active lineup.

Two Hundred Twenty-Two Top Division Goals, Three Hundred Twenty-Five International Appearances

The team Veterans Over 35s are located in southern the city and compete in the Cheshire Veterans League Top Division.

The roster this season includes nine former Premier League players, with a combined nearly 1,800 Premier League appearances.

The high-profile team also contains over 220 Premier League goals and over 320 global appearances.

They feature Papiss Cisse, who netted thirty-seven scores in 117 appearances for his former club after signing for them for nine million pounds from German league side Freiburg in 2012.

He had his first appearance for Wythenshawe in their most recent home-field game against defending title holders Collegiate Old Boys and scored all six scores in a six-two victory - including a 32-minute first-half hat-trick.

The roster for this campaign also includes ex- pros such as England and Liverpool forward Emile Heskey, Hull and Burnley FC winger George Boyd, Everton forward Oumar Niasse, Wigan full-back Maynor Figueroa, Manchester City pair Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and Premier League championship victors Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.

In total, the ex- top-flight players have won fifteen significant honors and moved for total transfer sums of around £123 million.

Household Figures and International Players

Ireland started turning out for the side in pre-season this season through good friend and current team player Blake Norton, and the former Republic of Ireland midfielder then invited additional former professionals, who all play in a weekly nine-a-side game, to join in.

Ex- Senegalese striker Oumar Niasse, who scored 12 goals in sixty-five Premier League matches for the Toffees and still attends their home games, also had his debut versus Collegiate OB - who are located in Liverpool and wear an Blue training kit as their uniform.

"A friend Stephen Ireland told me 'join and have a game, it's good fun'," said the striker.

"Then he told me we were facing a side from Liverpool and the surprise I had when I noticed them wearing Blue shirts - I thought this is strange for me!

"When you still love football and you feel you can still play, wherever you can kick a ball, what are you going to do?

"The people who turn up and watch are happy and to make a day if they see us competing there and to pose us queries - it's more like the pleasure of us having a place we can enjoy football, with structure of course."

So great is the squad depth at Wythenshawe, Niasse made his first game at defender.

"That's a little different but then, I enjoy running and just go forward - I'm not defending that much," he added.

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

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

Unreal Scenario

In addition to Cisse's 6 scores on debut, Ireland has netted 8 in 3 appearances for Wythenshawe, while George Boyd hit five on his debut match and Lescott, a centre-half by position, scored a triple in one game up front.

Wythenshawe are leading of the Premier Division with three victories from three and a goal difference of +19.

Paul Barrow, 38, who features on the wing for the opposition, came up against former Wigan full-back Figueroa on the weekend - and had to explain his nine-year-old son who Emile Heskey was.

Figueroa has played at two global tournaments for Honduras, in addition to playing in over 200 Premier League matches.

"It was spreading like wildfire they had all these ex-Premier League stars," remarked Barrow.

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

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

"We held our own for a solid twenty minutes but then we had a man dismissed and it was tough.

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

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

"Now we are eager for the second fixture."

'We'll Still Win the League'

The manager coaches the opposition veterans side, who won the Premier Division championship last season, along with Paul Maguire.

"Our team went 1-0 ahead and had a