As Wythenshawe Vets pass their 18th goal into the sagging Reddish North End Vets goal, away from home, with no reply, their coaching staff try to calculate the score. “How many we got now?” A lad on the sidelines checks the list and confirms the figure. It is indeed 0-18. There is no wild celebration. By this point, the net has been bulging every five minutes. One goal is ecstasy. Eighteen is a statistic.
They’re running rings around Reddish for a good reason. The Ammies, Wythenshawe FC’s nickname, might be short for amateurs – but many in their over-35s veterans team are actually ex-professionals. Not once-played-for-Accrington-Stanley ex-professionals. We’re talking Premier League winners (Danny Drinkwater); Africa Cup of Nations stars (Papiss Cissé); promotion legends (George Boyd); FA Cup lifters (Maynor Figueroa); and Football League journeymen (David Norris and Clayton McDonald). All of them are in action today, for a quarter-final cup game, watched on by a hundred or so hypothermic fans.
Their skipper and “pied piper” is Stephen Ireland, the Man City centenarian (that’s appearances, not years). “Everybody was raring to go and to run off the Christmas period,” he tells me, explaining that several games have been called off due to frozen pitches.
Wythy Vets’ dream (free) transfer window began after Ireland started a seven-a-side team called Inter Legends. Ireland, who was already friends with Vets player Blake Norton, began playing for the Vets and called up his mates to join. Also on their books, but not in the squad today, are the likes of Emile Heskey, Joleon Lescott, Nedum Onuoha, Oumar Niasse and Marc Albrighton and Martyn Waghorn. The Vets don’t do bench-warmers.
Unsurprisingly, this star-studded Sunday league team went viral. Last year, videos of the Vets rolling back the years circulated across Instagram, leading to a media day in November. Their talent is, naturally, part of the appeal. Paul, a first-time spectator and car bodywork painter, admires the chance to catch the ambidextrous, eyes-in-the-back-of-their-head quality of the players that he remembers seeing years ago. “They’re blessed with two feet.”
And if lore is everywhere right now, it’s also been applied to football; there’s a desire to continue to follow players’ stories long after they hang up their boots. “People finish their careers and vanish. A lot of fans want to know what they’re up to,” Ireland says. It makes for surreal viewing. Cissé, who once bagged Match of the Day Goal of the Season in 2012, is now scoring screamers for fun at Reddish Vale High School. Boyd, meanwhile, is just as much of a weapon on the wing as he once was for Burnley. Drinkwater makes defenders eat dirt.
This football time-warp is also happening over in the Baller League, a global competition that sees celebrities manage sides comprising ex-pros and influencer types. You’ve got Nani doing bicycle kicks and Micah Richards moonlighting as a keeper. But Felix Starck’s hyperactive start-up is there to make money and seems to be part of the beautiful game’s descent into a total business venture. It’s passé to say it, but it’s true. The Game’s Gone.
With season tickets more expensive than ever, VAR playing havoc and match footage hidden behind a fortress of paywalls, football is on its knees. The current malaise at the top is galvanising nostalgia for the “Barclays” era of the Premier League, when U2’s “Beautiful Day” opened Match of the Day, players shot from outside the box and proper manager scraps were a given. But it’s also creating a revival of grassroots football, which has, according to BBC Sport, enjoyed a 65 per cent growth in average attendances in the top four levels of the non-league pyramid. “I enjoy coming here more than I do going to the Etihad,” says Andy Gibbons, a retired nightclub owner.
The Vets may be outside of the pyramid, but it’s a similar story. Supporting them is as cheap as chips (which are, at the school’s cafe, only £1.50). “Families can come and watch Premier League winners, which they probably don’t see at their own clubs. They can pay a fiver, get a burger and a drink and meet the lads for free,” Kieran Megran, the gaffer, says. At the end of the match, a group of local kids sporting Stone Island Junior puffers invade the pitch, getting pictures with the players. There’s another queue outside the changing rooms for autographs and Instagram Stories.
It’s just as feelgood for the players. “A lot of players struggle after the game, so that’s why I try to pull them into these football events,” Ireland says. Falling out of the football system can have tragic consequences; joint manager Billy Silva tells me that Vini, who once played at Manchester United and later trained at Silva’s academy, died by suicide earlier this year aged just 19. “When you finish football, there’s nowhere else for you to go.” Drinkwater echoes this. “It fills a void if you miss football but don’t want to go into media or commentary or coaching. It’s healthy to have a run around and you get the dressing room banter again. It’s good craic.” (This extends to the sidelines, too, where the Wythy coaching staff playfully heckle their stars, at 15-0 up, for being past it.)
The dominance of top players could become the game’s downfall. Some part-timers, naturally, don’t revel in getting thumped by a load of ex-Prem players. Reddish North End Vets joint manager Ste, who I catch up with before the game, isn’t bothered. “We don’t care about it. We’ve got a good enough team,” he says before the match. “We’ve won everything there is to win,” adds Silva. “But these boys are probably going to take our crown.” Megran is aware that other opposing managers may not be as understanding about Wythenshawe Vets’ fantasy Sunday league team. “There are a lot of teams that don’t like us, that say they [the stars] will leave and won’t travel and all of this,” he says.
Do the Vets ever feel guilty banging in so many? Is it a bit like that clip of Michael Owen celebrating scoring against a 13-year-old keeper? “I say to Steve [Ireland], we have to stop scoring so many goals and play a bit, so we [don’t] make people angry,” Cissé says with a cheeky grin. “When we do go that far ahead, people think we’re taking the piss,” says Drinkwater. “But we’re not here to do that. It’s mutually respectful.”
“People have got jobs Monday to Friday and go drinking on a Saturday. I’m very mindful of not being disrespectful. I don’t want to upset people,” adds Ireland. “Unfortunately for them, today we were all just really starving to play.”
This hunger demonstrates a genuine dedication. Detractors of the Wythy Vets project were sceptical that these multi-millionaires would schlep to artificial pitches in Greater Manchester suburbs. But here they are and on an aggressively arctic day to boot. “They’re getting changed in a dance studio,” Megran says.
There is a risk that, in the future, the Vets could turn into a social media spectacle; they already have a few international tournaments lined up and recently played against Conor McGregor’s Black Forge FC in Dublin. Megran is aware of the balancing act. “The hardest thing is keeping everyone happy… but there will be some great stuff that’s happening that people will benefit from. But I do understand if lads want to just go and play football and are not interested in any of this,” he says. But he doesn’t regret calling in the big guns to bolster the Vets’ season. “If any team got this opportunity, they’d snap at it. I wanted these lads to come on and get us over the line because I wanted to win everything. I’m a winner.”
At the end of the day, there are no real losers. Amid the inevitable spectre of delayed onset muscle soreness (playing football over 35 is an extreme sport) players on both sides are in high spirits as they trudge off after the game. Sure, these weekend ballers just got destroyeds. But the pub bragging rights are worth it. “He’ll never forget about that tackle,” Paul says of Reddish’s centre-back, who put in a memorable cruncher to deny Ireland. “I’d pay to play these guys,” another spectator tells me. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to play alongside them or against them,” says Mike Gibbons, son of Andy and owner of the Vets’ sponsor MG Construction.
The issue, for the Wythy Vets, is finding a side that will give them a tough game. “It’s a bit easy at the minute,” concedes Mike Gibbons, before pitching a new Vets league with other teams of ex-pros. Elsewhere, rumours of potential signings swirl around all day. One name comes up more than any other: Wayne Rooney. “There’s plenty of people that are going to show up. There will be more off appearances,” Drinkwater teases. And if Rooney does make an appearance? “Then, we will fill a stadium.” And, no doubt, a few more scoresheets.
[Further reading: Brooklyn has been swallowed by brand Beckham]
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