Lionel Messi is the second best player on FIFA 17, and his unbelievable statistics mean he is an utter tour de force in the game and a sheer pleasure to play with.

The ideal man to practice skills with, the Barcelona star was rewarded with a new FIFA Ultimate Team card following his stunning brace to sink Real Madrid during last weekend's Clasico at the Santiago Bernabeu.

The new card comes in with a rating of 96, with EA tipping their hat to his extraordinary performance by booting his stats to 99 for dribbling, 92 for pace, 95 for shooting and 91 for passing, meaning if you can afford him, you've got yourself the perfect player.

However, with Messi turning 30 later this year, many don't think he'll be around for that much longer as a player of his stature won't have much left to achieve given how his career has gone so far.

So with that in mind, Dream Team have highlighted the work done by FIFA YouTuber Rich Leigh, who decided to push Messi's longevity as far as it would go by making him play until he reached the grand old age of 40.

While Messi may appear as superhuman in the game as he does in real life, Rich showed that his numbers do decline just like everyone else's as the years tick by.

As part of the experiment, Rich did the unthinkable by moving Messi on to Real Madrid, where he almost automatically saw his rating go down a point from 93 to 92.

No big deal you might think, but when Messi hits the milestone of 35 (while still at Real) his rating plummets to 81 – that's quite a big dip in just five years.

During this time his speed nosedives down to 41, taking away one of his greatest assets, while his technical skills are still high., However, that won't count for much if his other attributes aren't cutting it.

Fast forward to two years later, and his overall rating drops even further to a meagre 68, which is just enough to earn him a silver card rating.

And his fall from grace is complete by the ages of 39 and 40 as his rating slides down to 57, and by the time he hangs up his boots his personal attributes are shockingly bad.

We don't know how Real Madrid kept hold of a player whose acceleration, sprint speed and agility are all marked at 1, but there he is.

Rich posted the complete overview to his YouTube page, which you can watch above.