Meet the Sunday Division Team With 1,800 Top-Flight Games
How can you improve a outstanding experienced side that have won consecutive championships, featuring a double triumph boasting 30 wins from 32 games?
Recruit a group of ex- pro players who have played at the highest tier of club football and international soccer as you aim for additional honors.
A Greater Manchester team boasts an non-professional vets team with 9 ex- top-flight footballers in their current squad.
222 Top Division Goals, Three Hundred Twenty-Five International Appearances
The team Vets Over 35s are based in southern the city and compete in the Cheshire-based Vets League Top Division.
The squad list this season boasts 9 former Premier League footballers, with a total over 1,800 Premier League appearances.
This star-studded roster also includes over 220 top division goals and 325 global appearances.
The squad feature one forward, who notched thirty-seven goals in 117 appearances for Newcastle United after moving to them for £9m from Bundesliga club SC Freiburg in 2012.
He had his debut for the team in their last home game versus defending champions their rivals and netted every one of the six scores in a six-two victory - featuring a half-hour opening period hat-trick.
The team for this season also includes ex- pros such as England and Liverpool striker Emile Heskey, Hull City and Burnley winger George Boyd, Everton forward Oumar Niasse, Wigan full-back Maynor Figueroa, City duo Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and Premier League championship victors Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.
Collectively, the former Premier League players have secured 15 big honors and moved for combined transfer fees of approximately £123m.
Famous Names and International Players
Stephen Ireland began turning out for the side in preseason this summer through good friend and current team player Blake Norton, and the ex- Irish midfielder then invited other former professionals, who all play in a midweek nine-a-side match, to participate.
Former Senegalese striker Oumar Niasse, who netted 12 goals in 65 top-flight games for Everton and still goes to their home games, also had his first appearance versus the opposition - who are based in the city and use an Blue training kit as their strip.
"My friend Stephen told me 'join and play, it's good fun'," said the striker.
"Then he informed me we were playing a side from Liverpool and the shock I had when I noticed them sporting Blue kits - I thought this is wrong for me!
"When you still love the game and you know you can still do it, wherever you can play, what are you going to choose?
"The fans who turn up and see are pleased and to make a day if they see us playing there and to pose us queries - it's more like the joy of us having a place we can play, with structure of course."
So great is the squad depth at the club, he had his first game at defender.
"That's a little unusual but then, I enjoy sprinting and just go 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 running.
"That running is what I'm seeking. It's good fun."
'Surreal Scenario
In addition to Cisse's six scores on his first game, Ireland has netted eight in three games for the side, while George Boyd scored five on his first match and Lescott, a centre-half by trade, scored a hat-trick in one game as a striker.
The team are top of the Top Tier with three wins from three and a GD of plus nineteen.
Paul Barrow, 38, who features on the flank for the opposition, faced ex- Wigan defender Figueroa on Sunday - and had to tell his young son who Emile Heskey was.
Figueroa has played at 2 World Cups for his country, in as well as playing in more than two hundred Premier League matches.
"The news was spreading like a rumor they had these ex-Premier League players," said Barrow.
"I felt I was a little awestruck playing against Figueroa to be honest.
"Also Heskey got on and he's has 60-odd English caps.
"We competed well for a solid 20 mins but then we had a man dismissed and it was hard.
"Our group really have not ceased talking 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 playing a group of regular fellas.
"Now we are eager for the return fixture."
We Will Still Win the Title'
Andy Kirby manages the opposition veterans team, who won the Premier Division championship last season, along with Paul Maguire.
"We scored 1-0 ahead and had a