Antonio Valencia spent a decade roaring up and down the right flank at Old Trafford. Now, at 40, he is lacing his boots again in one of English football’s unlikeliest hotbeds of star power: the Cheshire Vets League Premier Division.
The former Manchester United captain, who officially retired in May 2021 after spells with LDU Quito and Queretaro, has been tempted back into competitive action by Wythenshawe Vets, a side rapidly turning Sunday football into a travelling nostalgia tour. The club confirmed his signing on Sunday evening, sealing a remarkable return for a player who once filled the void left by Cristiano Ronaldo.
From Ronaldo’s heir to Sunday league headliner
Valencia arrived at United from Wigan Athletic in 2009 with a daunting brief: replace the reigning world player of the year. He never mimicked Ronaldo’s swagger, but he imposed his own. First as a thunderous, touchline-hugging winger. Then, with age and experience, as one of the Premier League’s most dependable right-backs.
Across ten years in Manchester, he made more than 330 appearances, wore the captain’s armband, and collected nine major trophies. Two Premier League titles. An FA Cup. A Europa League. Twice he was voted Players’ Player of the Year by his teammates, and he forced his way into the 2009–10 PFA Team of the Year. For a decade, United managers knew exactly what they were getting on that right side: power, discipline, and a relentless engine.
He left Old Trafford in 2019, but never really left the city. Appearances for the Manchester United Legends side kept him connected to the club and the supporters who adored his no-frills commitment. Now, Wythenshawe gives him a way to stay in the place he calls home and still feel the cut and thrust of competition.
A veterans’ team built like a superclub
Valencia will not be short of familiar faces or familiar levels of expectation. Wythenshawe Vets have assembled a squad that looks less like a local side and more like a Premier League reunion.
Emile Heskey leads the line of English football cult heroes. Danny Drinkwater, a Premier League winner with Leicester City, adds pedigree in midfield. Stephen Ireland, once one of the division’s most inventive playmakers, offers guile between the lines. Behind them, Joleon Lescott and Nedum Onuoha bring years of top-flight defensive nous.
And the names keep coming. Marc Albrighton. Jefferson Montero. Cameron Jerome. It reads like the cast list from a decade of Match of the Day, dropped into the heart of local football.
For spectators on the touchline, these are not just players; they are fragments of their footballing youth. Men they watched under floodlights and in packed stadiums now performing a few yards from the rope. Every Wythenshawe fixture has become an event, a weekly reminder of how deep the Premier League era runs in the national memory.
Goals, trophies and a fearsome No 9
This isn’t a retirement home. It’s a juggernaut.
Wythenshawe Vets have torn through the Cheshire Vets League Premier Division so far, winning all seven of their matches and sitting comfortably at the summit. Their goal difference stands at a staggering +54, a number that would look absurd at any level.
At the heart of that carnage is Papiss Cisse. The former Newcastle United striker, remembered for outrageous finishes in black and white, has found Sunday league defending to his liking. He famously hit a double hat-trick in an 11-0 demolition of Liverpool South in November, and has already scored 19 goals in just three appearances this season, according to talkSPORT.
The dominance has spilled into cup competitions as well. In March, Wythenshawe lifted both the Lancashire FA Veterans Cup and the Manchester FA Veterans Cup, doing so with the kind of high-scoring performances that leave opponents wondering what exactly they’ve signed up for.
A new chapter for a modern full-back benchmark
For all the fun and spectacle of Wythenshawe’s project, Valencia’s presence carries a different weight. His career set a standard for the modern wide defender: explosive enough to play as a winger, disciplined enough to lock down a flank, and resilient enough to reinvent himself as his body changed.
That legacy does not vanish because the setting is smaller and the crowds lean on railings instead of filling stands. If anything, it becomes more tangible. Children on the touchline will see a former Manchester United captain up close. Older fans will remember Champions League nights as they watch him chase a ball on a municipal pitch.
Since leaving the top level, Valencia has never drifted far from the game or from United. This move keeps him right in the middle of both worlds: the city where he became a legend and the sport that defined his life.
Now he joins a veterans’ side built to dominate. The trophies are already stacking up. The goals are flowing. The names keep coming.
How far can a team of yesterday’s heroes push the limits of Sunday football today?
