🔗 Share this article

What can you boost a stellar veteran team who have secured consecutive titles, featuring a double triumph boasting thirty victories from thirty-two matches?

Sign a collection of ex- professionals that have performed at the highest tier of club football and global soccer as you target further trophies.

One Greater Manchester side boasts an amateur vets team with 9 former Premier League players in their active roster.

222 Premier League Scores, Three Hundred Twenty-Five Global Caps

The team Vets Over-35s are situated in southern Manchester and play in the Cheshire-based Vets Division Premier Division.

Their lineup this season boasts 9 ex- top-flight footballers, with a combined over 1,800 elite games.

The star-studded squad also contains over 220 Premier League scores and over 320 international caps.

They include one forward, who notched 37 goals in over 100 appearances for Newcastle United after signing for them for £9m from Bundesliga club Freiburg in 2012.

Cisse made his debut for the team in their most recent home-field match against reigning champions Collegiate Old Boys and scored every one of the six goals in a 6-2 victory - featuring a 32-minute opening period hat-trick.

The team for this season also features ex- professionals such as English and Anfield forward Emile Heskey, Hull City and Burnley midfielder George Boyd, Everton forward Oumar Niasse, Wigan Athletic full-back Maynor Figueroa, City duo Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and Premier League title victors Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.

Collectively, the former Premier League footballers have won fifteen significant honors and transferred for combined transfer sums of approximately £123m.

Famous Figures and Global Players

Ireland began turning out for the side during preseason this summer through close mate and present team teammate Blake Norton, and the ex- Republic of Ireland player then asked other former professionals, who all compete in a weekly nine-a-side match, to participate.

Former Senegal forward Niasse, who scored twelve goals in sixty-five top-flight matches for Everton and even now attends their home games, also made his first appearance versus Collegiate OB - who are located in Liverpool and wear an Everton training kit as their uniform.

"My friend Stephen Ireland told me 'come and play, it's enjoyable'," said Niasse.

"After that he informed me we were playing a team from the city and the surprise I had when I noticed them sporting Everton kits - I say this is wrong for me!

"If you still enjoy football and you feel you can still do it, wherever you can play, what are you going to choose?

"Those spectators who turn up and watch are pleased and to give someone's day if they watch us competing there and to pose us questions - it's really about the pleasure of us having somewhere we can enjoy football, with organisation of course."

So great is the bench strength at the club, he had his first game at defender.

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

"I warn my defender 'I'm not hanging back' and that I'm just going to keep attacking.

"That movement is what I'm looking for. It's enjoyable."

Dreamlike' Feeling

Along with the forward's six scores on his first game, Ireland has scored 8 in 3 games for Wythenshawe, while George Boyd hit five on his first match and Joleon Lescott, a centre-half by position, notched a triple in one game as a striker.

The team are leading of the Top Tier with three wins from three and a goal difference of +19.

Paul Barrow, thirty-eight, who features on the wing for the opposition, came up against former Wigan defender Maynor Figueroa on the weekend - and had to tell his nine-year-old boy who Heskey was.

He has appeared at 2 global tournaments for Honduras, in as well as playing in more than two hundred Premier League matches.

"It was going round like wildfire they had these former top-flight players," remarked Barrow.

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

"Also Heskey got on and he's got over 60 English caps.

"We held our own for a good 20 minutes but then we had a man dismissed and it was hard.

"Our group really haven't ceased chatting about it - I was phoning my mum and brother on the journey home.

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

"Now we can't wait for the second fixture."

We Will Still Win the League'

The manager manages the opposition veterans side, who won the Top Division title the previous campaign, along with Paul Maguire.

"We went one-nil up and had a