Renormalization of Singular Potentials and Power Counting

We analyze the renormalization of the nucleon--nucleon interaction at low energies in coordinate space for both one and two pion exchange chiral potentials. The singularity structure of the long range potential and the requirement of orthogonality respectively determines, once renormalizability is imposed, the minimum and maximum number of counterterms allowed in the effective description of the nucleon--nucleon interaction in a non-perturbative context.