It’s a long time, 2,159 minutes. Exactly enough to fit in Beverly Hills Cop and all four Indiana Jones movies, plus the Godfather, Toy Story, Man With No Name and the original Star Wars trilogies. Those of a more masochistic bent could spend it watching all the senior football Saido Berahino has played since he last scored a goal: 2,159 minutes and counting. By the time Stoke City take on Brighton in the Premier League on Monday night, 632 days will have passed since he celebrated one of his own. As statistics go it is shocking and must be a source of great concern for his employers. How many more movie marathons must we sit through before it is fair to label him another wasted talent with a great future behind him?
In an interview with the Daily Telegraph in early 2015, Berahino complained that “people read about me and hear about me but nobody really knows who I am”. At the time he was best known as a raw but promising 21-year-old striker with West Bromwich Albion, but the interview sketched a picture of a more complex character, offering different aspects of light and shade. A refugee forced to flee Burundi for England alone as a 10-year-old, Berahino eventually joined his mother and sisters who had also escaped the civil war that claimed the life of his father. He came across as an apparently well-adjusted young man who clearly adored his mum and had a good understanding of the suffering those left behind in his homeland were forced to endure. Heck, he was even trying to help by setting up an eponymous foundation which he hoped would eventually raise enough money to build a hospital.
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