Salomón Rondón and his move to Everton.

Image via Goodison News

This piece is about the Venezuelan veteran striker Salomón Rondón. Rondón is a player that has been around the block a few times, not necessarily for the most prestigious teams, but most football fans especially in Europe would have heard of him.

The 32-year-old first started to get known when he moved to Russian team Zenit St. Petersburg, where they were completely dominating the country and continuously competing int the Champions League.

In the 2 years he spent at Zenit, he made 29 appearances altogether getting 18 goals with 2 assists. As commendable as these statistics are for him, what was taken from this time in Russia was his ability to use defenders as objects for his advantage, and the pure strength he had to be able to bully off rival defenders.

It was from this that at the time Premier League club were on the hunt for a new striker, and coincidently Rondón was the man they decided to pick up in order to try and keep themselves from getting relegated, and it worked. The Venezuelan was a star man when he came to England in a less than glamourising West Brom team, guiding them to an impressive 10th place finish before unfortunately getting relegated the next season.

But The Baggies getting relegated didn’t affect Rondón too much as he was acquired by Newcastle in the following transfer window, on loan for the season. It was a move that made sense to everybody, they needed a new striker in order to fight off relegation, West Brom would welcome the funds as they were expected to let some of their better players leave, Rondón also had Premier League experience, so the move suited all parties.

The stocky striker carried on his form from the previous year into the new one with Newcastle, scoring 11 and getting 7 assists in his 30 games in the league, guiding The Magpies to a comfortable 13th place finish, before returning from his loan to go back to West Brom.

But instead, Rondón decided to slow down his career and ensure his family were set for generations by choosing to move to Chinese team Dalian Yifang, where in 2019 he gathered an impressive 8 goal contributions in 7 games, albeit in the Chinese league.

This was then followed by another move back to Russia, but at CSKA Moscow, where similar numbers were put up to his time in China.

And then to now, as a surprise to most football fans, towards the back end on the transfer window following the 2020/21 season, Rafa Benitez called upon Salomón Rondón at his new club, this time at arguably the biggest club he’s now played for, Everton. As unexpected as it was, this seemed to be the strategy for Everton that transfer window as the also brought in Demarai Gray and Andros Townsend for little to no money, who were both players who clearly had quality but had not shown it consistently enough, therefore lacked game time. This was similar for why Rondón was brought in, as he was Benitez’ ‘Mr Reliable’ for many clubs he was at.

Unfortunately, it hasn’t really worked out for the Venezuelan thus far as the understudy to Dominic Calvert-Lewin, as many Toffees fans have given up already with his inability to chase defenders and use his bullying techniques of old, as well as them disliking the fact Rondón doesn’t have the agility and nimbleness that the league perhaps needs nowadays in comparison to a few years ago.