Usain Bolt Registers for Manchester Sunday League Team
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- Usain Bolt, the eight-time Olympic champion sprinter, registered to play for Wythenshawe Vets FC, an over-35s Sunday league team based in south Manchester.
- The Football Association's Full-Time website lists the 40-year-old Jamaican as a registered player for the club, which competes in the Premier Division of the Cheshire Veterans Football League.
- Wythenshawe Vets FC attracted attention last year for assembling a squad full of former Premier League players, including Emile Heskey, Antonio Valencia, Papiss Cisse, Joleon Lescott, Danny Drinkwater, Oumar Niasse, Stephen Ireland, and Nedum Onuoha.
- Bolt set world records in both the 100m and 200m at the 2009 Athletics World Championships before retiring from athletics in 2017 to pursue professional football.
- Bolt scored twice in a friendly for Australian A-League side Central Coast Mariners in 2018, signed a contract with the club after rejecting a two-year offer from Maltese side Valletta, but left just eight weeks later.
- Wythenshawe have not officially announced Bolt's registration and have been contacted for comment.
- Other sources covering this story: Headlines across outlets frame this as Bolt's latest return to competitive football, with consensus that the squad's ex-Premier League talent makes this a credible outfit even if Bolt's role remains a cameo.
Why it matters: Bolt joins a club already stocked with ex-Premier League names like Heskey and Valencia, giving him a higher-quality stage than his eight-week Central Coast Mariners stint in 2018 — but the club's silence on an official announcement and Bolt's track record of short-lived trials indicate the registration may be more spectacle than serious second career.
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