Discover the Sunday League Squad Boasting 1,800 Premier League Games

Wythenshawe Vets bench during a match
The bench for Wythenshawe Vets during a six-two victory against their opponents on 19 October (left to right) - Oumar Niasse, Papiss Cisse, Marcel Edwards, Blake Norton, Maynor Figueroa, Dean Warburton and Emile Heskey

How can you enhance a stellar veteran side that have claimed back-to-back championships, featuring a league-cup double with 30 wins from 32 matches?

Sign a collection of former professionals that have competed at the highest level of club football and international football as you target more trophies.

One Greater Manchester side boasts an amateur veterans squad with 9 former Premier League footballers in their present roster.

222 Premier League Scores, Three Hundred Twenty-Five International Appearances

The team Veterans Over 35s are based in south the city and compete in the Cheshire-based Vets Division Premier Division.

The squad list this season includes nine former top-flight footballers, with a combined nearly 1,800 top-flight games.

The high-profile squad also boasts over 220 top division scores and 325 global appearances.

The squad include Papiss Cisse, who scored 37 scores in 117 appearances for his former club after signing for them for £9m from German league club Freiburg in 2012.

Cisse made his first appearance for the team in their last home match versus reigning champions Collegiate Old Boys and scored all six scores in a six-two win - featuring a 32-minute first-half hat-trick.

The roster for this season also includes former pros such as England and Anfield forward Emile Heskey, Hull City and Burnley midfielder George Boyd, Toffees striker Oumar Niasse, Wigan full-back Maynor Figueroa, City pair Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and top-flight title victors Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.

Together, the former Premier League footballers have won fifteen big trophies and moved for combined transfer fees of approximately £123 million.

Household Names and Global Stars

Stephen Ireland in action
Stephen Ireland earned six Republic of Ireland caps, netting four goals

Stephen Ireland began turning out for the team in pre-season this summer through good mate and present Wythenshawe teammate Blake Norton, and the former Irish midfielder then invited other former professionals, who all play in a midweek nine-a-side match, to participate.

Former Senegal forward Niasse, who netted 12 scores in 65 Premier League games for Everton and even now goes to their home games, also made his debut versus Collegiate OB - who are based in Liverpool and use an Everton training kit as their uniform.

Oumar Niasse playing for Everton
Oumar Niasse played for Everton from 2016 and 2020

"A friend Stephen Ireland said 'come and have a game, it's good fun'," commented the striker.

"After that he informed me we were facing a team from the city and the surprise I had when I saw them sporting Blue kits - I say this is strange for me!

"If you still enjoy the game and you know you can still play, anywhere you can kick a ball, what are you going to choose?

"The fans who turn up and watch are pleased and to give someone's moment if they see us playing there and to ask us queries - it's more like the joy of us getting a place we can enjoy football, with structure of course."

So great is the squad depth at Wythenshawe, Niasse made his debut at defender.

"That's a little unusual but then, I love sprinting and just go forward - I'm not defending that much," he added.

"I tell my centre-back 'I'm not staying' and that I'm just going to keep running.

"That movement is what I'm after. It's good fun."

Maynor Figueroa in action
Former Wigan Athletic full-back Maynor Figueroa is turning out for the team

Unreal Experience

In addition to Cisse's 6 scores on debut, Stephen Ireland has netted eight in 3 games for the side, while Boyd hit 5 on his debut appearance and Lescott, a centre-half by trade, notched a hat-trick in one game up front.

Wythenshawe are leading of the Premier Tier with three wins from three and a GD of plus nineteen.

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

Figueroa has played at 2 World Cups for his country, in as well as playing in more than two hundred top-flight games.

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

"I think I was a little starstruck facing Figueroa to be honest.

"Even Heskey got on and he's got over 60 English appearances.

"We competed well for a good twenty minutes but then we had a man dismissed and it was hard.

"Our group really haven't stopped talking about it - I was phoning my mother and brother on the way home.

"The opponents were all friendly, shaking our hands after the game - it was like playing a group of regular fellas.

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

'We'll Still Take the League'

Andy Kirby coaches the Collegiate vets side, who secured the Premier Division championship last season, along with Paul Maguire.

"We went 1-0 ahead and had a

Lisa Davis
Lisa Davis

Wildlife biologist and conservationist with over a decade of experience studying sloths in Central America.