{"id":863442,"date":"2026-08-21T17:42:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T17:42:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/863442\/"},"modified":"2026-08-21T17:42:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T17:42:16","slug":"usain-bolt-olympics-icon-registers-to-play-for-manchester-sunday-league-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/863442\/","title":{"rendered":"Usain Bolt: Olympics icon registers to play for Manchester Sunday league team"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eight-time Olympic champion sprinter Usain Bolt has registered to play for a veterans’ Sunday league football team in Manchester.<\/p>\n

The Football Association’s Full-Time website has the 40-year-old Jamaican as a registered player for Wythenshawe Vets FC, who play in the Premier Division of the Cheshire Veterans Football League.<\/p>\n

The over-35s team based in south Manchester attracted attention last year for assembling a squad full of former Premier League players<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Wythenshawe’s squad for this season includes former professionals such as England and Liverpool striker Emile Heskey, Everton striker Oumar Niasse, Manchester United captain Antonio Valencia, Newcastle striker Papiss Cisse, Manchester City duo Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha and Premier League title winners Joleon Lescott and Danny Drinkwater.<\/p>\n

Bolt is the fastest man in history over 100m and 200m, having set the world records for both distances at the 2009 Athletics World Championships.<\/p>\n

After retiring from athletics in 2017, he pursued a career in professional football.<\/p>\n

In 2018 Bolt scored twice in a friendly for Australian A-League side Central Coast Mariners, and signed a contract with the club after rejecting a two-year offer from Maltese side Valletta, but left just eight weeks later.<\/p>\n

Wythenshawe, who have not officially announced Bolt’s registration, have been contacted for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eight-time Olympic champion sprinter Usain Bolt has registered to play for a veterans’ Sunday league football team in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":863443,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-863442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=863442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/863443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=863442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=863442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=863442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}