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With the Major League Soccer season in full swing, Transfermarkt has updated the market values of 122 players. In what is an intermediary update, the focus was primarily on new signings or young players that have entered the league this season. While MLS has been a major driver on the transfer market this winter, and many new signings would usually crap the headlines as part of this update, it is the league’s biggest star who will be the big focus this time: Lionel Messi.

The 2022 World Cup winner arrived in MLS last summer and has caused significant media hype in North America and beyond. With Messi driving the sales of Inter Miami CF kits and increasing the visibility of MLS significantly, Transfermarkt decided to keep Messi at €35m as part of the November update. But the father time is also impacting the world’s greatest player and as a result, Transfermarkt has decided to decrease Messi’s market value from €35m to €30m.

“Messi remains the MLS star and, despite his age, is still one of the best footballers on the planet,” Transfermarkt Data Administrator North America Dominic Becker said. “But age is a factor, even for Messi. He has increasingly struggled with smaller injuries, and a downgrade was impossible to avoid.”

Despite the downgrade, Messi remains the most valuable over 34 players on the planet, a full €15m more valuable than the next most valuable player, Robert Lewandowski (€15m), and the most valuable player in MLS ahead of Atlanta United’s Thiago Almada (remained at €27m). Messi is also not the only Inter Miami player with a downgrade. Messi’s friends Jordi Alba and Sergio Busquets, both 35, have seen their market values downgraded from €3m to €2.5m, and 33-year-old defender Sergiy Kryvtsov saw his market value drop from €2m to €1.8m.