🔗 Share this article

How can you improve a stellar veteran team that have won consecutive titles, including a league-cup double boasting 30 victories from 32 games?

Sign a collection of former pro players that have competed at the elite tier of club football and global football as you target more honors.

One Manchester side boasts an amateur veterans team with nine ex- top-flight players in their active squad.

222 Premier League Scores, 325 International Caps

The team Vets Over-35s are located in south Manchester and play in the Cheshire-based Veterans League Top Tier.

Their roster this season includes nine former top-flight footballers, with a total 1,801 Premier League appearances.

The star-studded squad also contains over 220 top division scores and 325 international appearances.

The squad feature one forward, who scored thirty-seven scores in 117 games for his former club after signing for them for nine million pounds from German league club SC Freiburg in 2012.

He made his debut for the team in their last home-field game versus defending title holders Collegiate Old Boys and scored every one of the six scores in a six-two victory - featuring a half-hour first-half triple.

The squad for this season also features former professionals such as English and Liverpool striker Emile Heskey, Hull City and Burnley midfielder George Boyd, Everton striker Oumar Niasse, Wigan full-back Maynor Figueroa, City pair Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and Premier League title winners Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.

Collectively, the former Premier League footballers have secured 15 significant trophies and moved for combined transfer fees of approximately £123m.

Household Figures and Global Players

Ireland started turning out for the team in pre-season this season through good friend and present Wythenshawe teammate Blake Norton, and the ex- Republic of Ireland player then invited other ex-pros, who all compete in a weekly nine-a-side game, to join in.

Ex- Senegal striker Niasse, who scored twelve scores in 65 Premier League matches for the Toffees and even now attends their home games, also had his debut versus Collegiate OB - who are based in the city and use an Everton training kit as their strip.

"A friend Stephen said 'come and have a game, it's enjoyable'," said Niasse.

"After that he informed me we were playing a team from the city and the shock I had when I saw them sporting Blue kits - I thought this is wrong for me!

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

"The fans who turn up and see are pleased and to give someone's moment if they see us playing there and to pose us questions - it's more like the pleasure of us having a place we can enjoy football, with organisation of course."

Such is the strength in depth at the club, Niasse made his first game at defender.

"It's a bit unusual but then, I love sprinting and just move forward - I'm not staying back that much," he added.

"I tell my defender 'I'm not hanging back' and that I'm just going to continue running.

"That running is what I'm seeking. It's enjoyable."

'Surreal Experience

In addition to Cisse's 6 goals on his first game, Stephen Ireland has scored 8 in 3 appearances for the side, while George Boyd scored five on his debut appearance and Joleon Lescott, a centre-half by position, notched a triple in one game up front.

The team are top of the Top Tier with 3 victories from three and a goal difference of plus nineteen.

One opponent, thirty-eight, who plays on the wing for Collegiate OB, faced ex- Latics defender Maynor Figueroa on Sunday - and had to tell his nine-year-old boy who Emile Heskey was.

Figueroa has appeared at 2 World Cups for Honduras, in as well as featuring in over two hundred top-flight matches.

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

"I felt I was a bit starstruck playing against Figueroa to be honest.

"Also Heskey came on and he's got 60-odd England caps.

"Our side competed well for a good twenty mins but then we had a player dismissed and it was tough.

"We literally have not ceased talking about it - I was calling my mum and sibling on the journey home.

"The opponents were all really nice, shaking our hands after the match - it was like facing a bunch of regular fellas.

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

We Will Still Take the Title'

Andy Kirby manages the Collegiate veterans side, who secured the Premier Tier title last season, together with Paul Maguire.

"Our team scored one-nil up and had a