Meet the Weekend League Team Featuring Over 1,800 Premier League Appearances
How do you improve a stellar veteran team that have secured consecutive titles, including a double triumph boasting 30 wins from thirty-two games?
Sign a collection of former professionals that have played at the highest tier of club and international football as you target more honors.
A Greater Manchester club fields an amateur vets team with nine former Premier League footballers in their active lineup.
222 Top Division Scores, Three Hundred Twenty-Five Global Caps
Wythenshawe Veterans Over 35s are located in south Manchester and play in the Cheshire Veterans League Top Tier.
The lineup this season includes nine former top-flight footballers, with a combined nearly 1,800 top-flight matches.
The high-profile squad also includes over 220 Premier League scores and 325 international caps.
The squad feature one forward, who scored thirty-seven goals in 117 games for his former club after joining them for £9m from Bundesliga club SC Freiburg in 2012.
Cisse made his first appearance for the team in their last home game versus reigning champions their rivals and scored all six goals in a six-two win - including a half-hour opening period hat-trick.
Wythenshawe's roster for this campaign also features former professionals such as English and Anfield striker Emile Heskey, Hull City 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 victors Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.
In total, the former top-flight footballers have claimed fifteen significant honors and moved for combined transfer fees of around £123 million.
Household Figures and International Players
Ireland started playing for the team in preseason this summer through close mate and present team teammate Blake Norton, and the former Republic of Ireland player then invited additional former professionals, who all play in a weekly small-sided match, to participate.
Former Senegalese striker Oumar Niasse, who netted twelve goals in sixty-five Premier League matches for Everton and even now goes to their matches at Goodison Park, also made his debut against the opposition - who are located in the city and wear an Blue training kit as their uniform.
"My friend Stephen told me '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 shock I had when I saw them wearing Blue shirts - I thought this is strange for me!
"If you still love the game and you feel you can still play, anywhere you can play, what are you going to do?
"Those spectators who come and see are happy and to make someone's moment if they see us playing there and to pose us questions - it's really about the pleasure of us getting somewhere we can enjoy football, with structure of course."
Such is the squad depth at the club, Niasse made his debut at full-back.
"It's a little different but then, I love running and just move inside - I'm not defending that much," he said.
"I tell my centre-back 'I'm not staying' and that I'm just going to continue attacking.
"That running is what I'm after. It's good fun."
Unreal Feeling
Along with Cisse's 6 scores on his first game, Stephen Ireland has netted 8 in three appearances for the side, while Boyd hit 5 on his first match and Lescott, a defender by trade, notched a triple in one game as a striker.
Wythenshawe are leading of the Premier Tier with 3 victories from three and a goal difference of plus nineteen.
One opponent, 38, who plays on the flank for the opposition, faced former Wigan full-back Maynor Figueroa on the weekend - and had to tell his young boy who Heskey was.
Figueroa has appeared at 2 global tournaments for Honduras, in as well as playing in more than two hundred Premier League matches.
"The news was going round like wildfire they had these former top-flight stars," remarked the player.
"I felt I was a bit starstruck facing Figueroa to be honest.
"Also Emile [Heskey] came on and he's has over 60 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 haven't ceased chatting about it - I was phoning my mum and brother on the way home.
"The opponents were all dead sound, shaking our hands after the match - it was like playing a group of regular fellas.
"Now we can't wait for the return match."
'We'll Still Win the League'
The manager coaches the Collegiate veterans team, who won the Top Tier title the previous campaign, along with Paul Maguire.
"Our team scored one-nil up and had a