Introduce the Weekend Division Team With 1,800 English Top Division Matches
How can you improve a stellar experienced side who have claimed consecutive titles, featuring a league-cup double with 30 victories from thirty-two games?
Recruit a raft of former professionals who have competed at the elite tier of club football and international soccer as you target additional honors.
A Manchester club has an amateur vets squad with nine ex- top-flight players in their present roster.
222 Top Division Goals, 325 Global Appearances
Wythenshawe Vets Over-35s are based in southern Manchester and play in the Cheshire Vets Division Premier Division.
Their roster this season includes 9 former Premier League footballers, with a collective over 1,800 Premier League games.
This star-studded roster also contains over 220 top division goals and 325 international caps.
The squad include one forward, who scored 37 scores in over 100 appearances for Newcastle United after signing for them for £9m from Bundesliga side Freiburg in 2012.
He made his debut for Wythenshawe in their most recent home-field game versus reigning champions Collegiate Old Boys and scored all six scores in a six-two victory - featuring a 32-minute opening period hat-trick.
The roster for this season also features former pros such as English and Anfield forward Emile Heskey, Hull and Burnley FC winger George Boyd, Toffees striker Oumar Niasse, Wigan full-back Maynor Figueroa, City duo Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and top-flight title winners Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.
In total, the ex- top-flight players have won 15 major trophies and transferred for total transfer fees of around £123m.
Well-Known Names and International Stars
Ireland started turning out for the team during pre-season this summer through close friend and present team teammate Blake Norton, and the former Irish player then invited additional ex-pros, who all compete in a midweek small-sided game, to join in.
Ex- Senegalese forward Niasse, who netted 12 scores in sixty-five Premier League games for Everton and still attends their home games, also had his first appearance versus the opposition - who are located in Liverpool and wear an Blue training kit as their uniform.
"A mate Stephen Ireland said 'come and have a game, it's a laugh'," said the striker.
"After that he told me we were facing a side from Liverpool and the shock I had when I saw them wearing Everton kits - I thought this is strange for me!
"When you still enjoy the game and you know you can still do it, anywhere you can play, what are you going to choose?
"The spectators who turn up and see are pleased and to make someone's moment if they see us playing there and to ask us questions - it's more like the pleasure of us having a place we can enjoy football, with structure of course."
So great is the strength in depth at the club, he had his first game at full-back.
"It's a bit unusual but then, I love sprinting and just move inside - I'm not staying back that much," he said.
"I warn my defender 'I'm not hanging back' and that I'm just going to continue attacking.
"That movement is what I'm after. It's good fun."
Dreamlike' Experience
In addition to the forward's 6 goals on his first game, Ireland has netted 8 in three appearances for Wythenshawe, while George Boyd hit five on his debut match and Lescott, a defender by position, notched a triple in one game as a striker.
The team are top of the Top Division with 3 wins from 3 and a goal difference of +19.
Paul Barrow, 38, who features on the wing for the opposition, came up against ex- Latics defender Figueroa on the weekend - and had to explain his nine-year-old boy who Emile Heskey was.
He has appeared at two World Cups for his country, in as well as featuring in more than two hundred top-flight matches.
"It was going round like a rumor they had these former top-flight players," said the player.
"I felt I was a little awestruck facing him to be honest.
"Even Emile [Heskey] got on and he's got over 60 England caps.
"Our side held our own for a good 20 minutes but then we had a man dismissed and it was hard.
"We literally have not ceased chatting about it - I was phoning my mother and sibling on the way home.
"They were all really nice, shaking our hands after the game - it was like playing a bunch of regular fellas.
"Now we can't wait for the second fixture."
We Will Still Win the League'
Andy Kirby manages the opposition vets team, who won the Top Division title the previous campaign, together with Paul Maguire.
"We scored one-nil ahead and had a