Peter Crouch, one of the Premier League’s most endearing characters, scores his 100th goal in the league

Let us consider the majesty and wonder of Peter Crouch. Since English football shook hands with the devil and created the Premier League, just 25 players had scored 100 or more goals in the breakaway division. On Wednesday, Crouch’s goal against Everton made him the 26th member of this imaginary, contrived, but symbolically quite potent 100 Club.

He is in august company. From the true striking greats like Alan Shearer (260) or Thierry Henry (175), through the admirably consistent stars like Jermain Defoe (155) and Teddy Sheringham (146), and on to those who quite simply played for absolutely ages — Ryan Giggs (109) — it takes quality and longevity to score 100 Premier League goals. Usually both in extreme quantities. A moment, too, to admire Matt Le Tissier’s extremely on-brand, no effort wasted, round 100.

You could argue, perhaps, that Crouch — as a goalscorer, and just as a goalscorer — doesn’t stack up against most of the 100 Club’s other strikers. Maybe even all of them. And it wouldn’t be much of an argument because basically everybody would agree with you, including possibly Crouch himself. He’s never managed to breach the symbolic 20 goals in a season barrier, and the last time he managed more than 15 was in 2008-09.

But equally, top-level sport is as rigorous a meritocracy as society has to offer. We live in a world where unshakeable self-confidence and a rich daddy can earn a person a serious, proper job that comes with nuclear bombs and a free plane, and yet if somebody’s no good at the frivolous business of kicking a ball into the net, they’ll likely be found out long before they make it onto the pitch.

It is here that we come to the giraffe in the room: the question of height. Football’s meritocracy means that Crouch, while never brilliant, has to have been useful, and Crouch’s utility is inextricably connected to being 6’7. He holds the record for most Premier League goals scored with the head, and a little known UK law ensures that none of his games pass without somebody, somewhere, remarking to somebody else that he has “a good touch for a big man.”

No player has ever embodied this cliche more. At its heart is a sense of surprise, of wrongness: this is not how the universe should work. Short footballers are there to do the fancy stuff, the dribbling and the passing and the ball control. Tall ones are there to blunder around, knock people over, and get their heads on it. Watching a tall footballer with a deft touch is like watching a trebuchet juggle.

Crouch, who most of the time has a good touch for a footballer of any size, amplifies all this by being tall in almost sarcastically lanky fashion, a teenage boy whose growth spurt kept going and going, and who never got around to filling out. This makes every good touch even more surprising, since common sense would suggest that Crouch should extend a tentative foot, fall over, then stand in a corner for a couple of hours, furiously avoiding all eye contact. Elegance is an easy and seductive fiction, one that Crouch’s frame simply cannot sustain.

Another layer of peculiarity comes from the fact that Crouch, for a big man, appears to be really quite bad in the air. The facts may suggest that he’s scored more headed goals than any other Premier League striker, but every time he leaves the ground the eye cannot help but see mistimed jumps and lurches, obscure collisions of uncanny angles, and more elbows than seems plausible. Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that the ball sometimes ends up in the back of the net. It’s probably as confused as the rest of us.

Yet here he now is, bicep to shoulder with Didier Drogba (104) and Paul Scholes (107), hard on the heels of Sergio Aguero (113 and counting) and Nicolas Anelka (125). And beyond the Premier League, he’s won more England caps than genuine striking greats Nat Lofthouse and Robbie Fowler, and neither of them ever managed to score a competitive international goal by pulling on the hair of the nearest defender. Or celebrate one by dancing the robot.

And this, perhaps, is where we find the appeal of Crouch, in the incongruity between how he goes about his work, and how his work turns out. He looks as though he’s muddling affably through every game. Yet he’s been muddling through for so long, to acceptable effect, for Portsmouth, Liverpool, Spurs, Stoke City, and plenty others, that he’s — oops! — muddled his way into the record books.

In an odd sort of way, of his fellow 100 Club members, it’s Le Tissier with whom he has the most in common. Stylistically they could barely be further apart, and yet both undermined the conventions of the game as they found their way to 100 goals.

Le Tissier proved that all-consuming ambition and drive aren’t necessary preconditions for prolific, persistent brilliance. Crouch, meanwhile, proves that excellent athletes and fine footballers don’t have to look like anything like either. In amongst all the goalscoring titans and demi-titans, they are the curiosities. And a world or a Premier League without curiosities would be a very sad place indeed.