Barcelona star Lionel Messi has dropped to 97th on the list of most valuable footballers in the world while Manchester United striker Marcus Rashford is the sport’s most valuable player, a study calculates.
The CIES Football Observatory use a number of criteria to judge player’s value including, but not limited to, age, contract duration, sporting level, international status and inflation.
That data is applied to footballers across Europe’s top five leagues – Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga and Ligue 1.
England international Rashford tops the list at a value of €165m, while Borussia Dortmund’s Erling Haaland (€152m) and Liverpool’s Trent Alexander-Arnold (€151m) complete the top three, with Rashford’s United teammate Bruno Fernandes in fourth.
Barcelona news over the past decade has been dominated by Messi’s prominence at the top of world football but he is now ranked just 97th, as he celebrates his 34th birthday at the end of the current season.