On milestones

By Emerald Gao
Written on April 21, 2007

Two milestones coming up for John Arne Riise and Pepe Reina -- 300 and 100 games in red, respectively. It's a struggle to calculate time in terms of a career, of stops, of goals. Sometimes the numbers hardly make sense, even to the statistics-obsessed mind. I still remember when JAR first arrived at Liverpool, ginger as all get out and thinner, sproggier, but that left leg of his always did stand out. He's been called a number of things over the years: unimpressive, steady, wasteful, dynamic. He's got a daughter, a scandal, a big mouth, a fantastic shot. Those things haven't changed, but now the numbers have (or at least consciously so).

Pepe is another story. He's still a kid, even if he doesn't play like one, doesn't punch like one, doesn't yell like one. One hundred is nothing to shout about in footballing time, but his records actually are impressive. I'm not sure that I believe in celebrating numbers and time until the end of an era, but it seems to be a preoccupation for us fans, for whom the numbers, the years, are all that's available. Congratulations to both.

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