Discover the Sunday League Team Featuring Over 1,800 Top-Flight Appearances
What can you boost a excellent veteran side who have secured back-to-back titles, including a league-cup double with thirty victories from 32 matches?
Sign a group of former professionals that have performed at the highest tier of club and international soccer as you target further silverware.
One Greater Manchester side has an amateur veterans team with 9 former Premier League players in their present lineup.
222 Top Division Goals, Three Hundred Twenty-Five Global Caps
Wythenshawe Veterans Over-35s are based in southern Manchester and play in the Cheshire-based Veterans Division Top Division.
The roster this campaign boasts 9 ex- top-flight footballers, with a collective 1,801 elite appearances.
The elite squad also includes over 220 top division scores and over 320 global caps.
They include Papiss Cisse, who notched 37 goals in 117 games for Newcastle United after signing for them for £9m from German league side SC Freiburg in January 2012.
Cisse made his debut for Wythenshawe in their last home-field match against defending champions Collegiate Old Boys and netted all six goals in a 6-2 victory - featuring a 32-minute first-half hat-trick.
Wythenshawe's roster for this season also features former professionals such as English and Liverpool striker Emile Heskey, Hull and Burnley midfielder George Boyd, Toffees forward Oumar Niasse, Wigan full-back Maynor Figueroa, City pair Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and top-flight championship winners Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.
Collectively, the former top-flight footballers have claimed 15 major honors and moved for combined transfer fees of about £123m.
Famous Figures and International Stars
Ireland started turning out for the team in pre-season this season through close mate and present Wythenshawe player Blake Norton, and the ex- Republic of Ireland midfielder then asked other ex-pros, who all compete in a midweek small-sided game, to join in.
Former Senegalese forward Niasse, who scored twelve scores in 65 Premier League games for Everton and even now goes to their home games, also had his debut versus the opposition - who are based in Liverpool and use an Everton warm-up gear as their uniform.
"A mate Stephen Ireland said 'come and play, it's good fun'," commented the striker.
"After that he informed me we were facing a side from the city and the surprise I had when I noticed them sporting Everton kits - I thought this is strange for me!
"When you still love the game and you feel you can still play, wherever you can play, what are you going to choose?
"The spectators who come and watch are happy and to make a day if they see us playing there and to ask us queries - it's more like the pleasure of us getting somewhere we can play, with organisation of course."
So great is the squad depth at the club, Niasse had his debut at full-back.
"It's a little unusual but then, I enjoy sprinting and just move forward - I'm not defending that much," he added.
"I warn my defender '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 the forward's six scores on his first game, Stephen Ireland has netted eight in 3 games for the side, while Boyd scored five on his first match and Lescott, a centre-half by trade, scored a hat-trick in one match as a striker.
Wythenshawe are top of the Premier Tier with three wins from 3 and a GD of +19.
One opponent, thirty-eight, who features on the flank for the opposition, came up against former Latics defender Figueroa on Sunday - and had to tell his young boy who Emile Heskey was.
He has played at two global tournaments for his country, in addition to playing in more than two hundred Premier League games.
"The news was spreading like a rumor they had all these former top-flight players," remarked Barrow.
"I felt I was a little starstruck playing against Figueroa to be honest.
"Even Heskey got on and he's has 60-odd English appearances.
"Our side competed well for a good twenty mins but then we had a man dismissed and it was tough.
"Our group really haven't ceased chatting about it - I was phoning my mother and sibling on the journey home.
"They were all friendly, shaking our hands after the match - it was like facing a group of normal fellas.
"Now we are eager for the second fixture."
'We'll Still Win the Title'
The manager manages the opposition vets side, who won the Premier Division title the previous campaign, together with Paul Maguire.
"Our team went one-nil ahead and had a