While finalizing details less than a week before the start of the Professional League,
River is waiting for its last reinforcement and with it it will say goodbye to the transfer market
.
This is the Venezuelan striker
Salomón Rondón
, who will arrive in the country between Wednesday and Thursday.
In this way,
Martín Demichelis
will have his last reinforcement and will add hierarchy to the attack.
Rondón is in Spain
, where he is training on his own with a personal physical trainer.
Although, when he joins River, a special conditioning job awaits him, for which, perhaps, he will miss the first dates, according to what
Clarín
learned .
And once the striker arrives in the country, after undergoing a medical examination, he will sign
on free status until December 2024
with an option to extend the relationship for another year.
In this way, Rondón, 33, will meet again with Demichelis, with whom he shared a team at Málaga in Spain, where the Venezuelan played between 2010 and 2012. And thus Micho will have the main alternative to
Miguel Borja
as center forward.
Photo: Pedro RANCES MATTEY / AFP.
In any case, they could also play together if the River coach decides to do so at some point.
Although of course, in that case he would have to use another scheme, different from the 4-2-3-1 or the 4-1-4-1 that he is apparently going to propose according to what was seen in the preseason friendlies.
Precisely, Borja, who will have an important internal competition with Rondón, spoke about the arrival of the Venezuelan a few days ago.
“Let's hope that he comes to help us because we know that he can give us a hand.
Welcome be.
I think he has an impressive quality to be here
, "said the Colombian.
The Venezuelan's last experience was at English
Everton
, a club where he did not have much continuity and agreed to terminate his contract.
In fact,
he only started two games
, completed 90 minutes in one and scored no goals.
Salomón Rondón, at Everton.
Photo: AP/Jon Super.
In any case, Rondón has an important resume: he has scored 165 goals in a career in which he has played for various clubs in Europe (Las Palmas, Málaga, Rubin Kazán, Zenit, West Bromwich, Newcastle and Everton) and a stint at the Dalian Pro, in the Chinese Super League, at the time when they brought several figures to the tournament in that country.
Rondón has played 493 games with 165 goals and 46 assists at club level
throughout his career
.
To this we must add his long career in the Venezuelan National Team, in which he played
95 games and scored 38 goals
.
And he is the all-time top scorer for the Venezuelan team, which he joined after deciding to play soccer and thus fulfilled his mother's dream
Of him Maitana Giménez
.
It is that Rondón also
played basketball and had
Michael Jordan
as an idol
.
In fact, the shirt he chose for his First Division debut was the '23' in honor of the Chicago Bulls legend, considered the best basketball player in history.
Born in Caracas,
Rondón has a special relationship with Argentina
, even though he has never lived in the country.
His mother, being pregnant with him, shouted the goals of
Diego Armando Maradona
because of the fanaticism that he generated from watching him play.
Miami confirmed it to me
And in 2012, the year in which Rondón went from Málaga to Rubin Kazan of Russia, in a million-dollar transfer,
he had the pleasure of playing for Lionel Messi's team
.
I eat?
Of course, he was his partner in a friendly benefit in Miami called
World Soccer Master
.
And he not only threw walls with La Pulga in the “Friends of Messi” team against a “Rest of the World” team, but also received a cross-assist from Leo and scored a header.
Other so many times they were face to face in matches between the Argentine National Team and the Venezuelan National Team.
And Rondón remembers one of them in a very special way.
That of the friendly in Madrid, on March 22, 2019, when the Venezuelan striker, after 5 minutes, opened the score of Vinotinto's 3-1 against Lionel Scaloni's team.
Rondón spiked diagonally towards the goal, leaving behind an advanced Argentine defense, controlled a long pass with great hierarchy and broke the goal with a bombing.
The goalkeeper who suffered from that Venezuelan firepower was Franco Armani, who will now be one of the Venezuelan's new teammates who will seek to make history in the River and in Argentine soccer.
look also
The Professional League begins and the 'neutrals' return: 8,000 River fans will be able to be in Santiago del Estero
The two teams that Demichelis tried in River's last friendly, which closed its preparation for the Professional League with victory