Hear
Salomon Rondonformer forward of River and captain of the Venezuela national football teamdefended his time at the Núñez club, although he criticized the leadership headed by Jorge Brito and stated that the impact of different types of dollars and state administrative problems They were decisive in his departure from the club and the country.
“River for me was another team in my career, sincerely. It is a great team, it is what many people know, but it was just another team and that’s it,” Rondón minimized in an interview in The Vinotinto Podcast and he showed his chest for his actions: “A lot of people said: ‘It didn’t go well for you’, but I played 35 games and scored 10 goals. If I didn’t do well, I would have gone like in Las Palmas, where I played 15 games and scored zero goals. They bring you in, you’re a gamble and you don’t score any goals as a striker. That’s what’s going wrong for you.”
Then, he added: “In River I scored 10 goals, having given them I don’t know how many victories in the Monumental, winning games on the hour. “It didn’t go well for you” is subjective, it depends on how you are physically and mentally.” “How many Argentine players go to Mexican soccer and don’t do well?” he asked himself.
The captain of the Venezuelan team, which this Saturday debuted with a victory against Ecuador in the Copa América, differentiated the team from the leadership. “I trained, I was professional, I never disrespected anyone. The team is spectacular, but I felt that the management treated me badly“, he recalled and said that the club authorities were surprised when he announced that he wanted to terminate the contract: “River’s logic is that contracts are to be fulfilled”. “But I don’t want to be here for all these reasons,” he told them.
“I arrived in Mexico on December 28 and on January 8 I already had my ID. I arrived in Argentina on January 28 and they gave me my DNI on August 7. That’s it, with this I told you everything. There were many things,” added the all-time top scorer of the Venezuelan team.
Later he commented on one of the first problems he had, when buying a television: “I go to the nearest shopping center, I see a television and I say ‘I want this’, a 32-inch one. The television cost me 1,200 dollars, one that in Spain costs 300 euros. What happened? We pass the card outside. At that time there was a card dollar, a tourist dollar, an official dollar, there were 200 changes and I didn’t even have an account. [bancaria] “No DNI, already having been in the country for two months.”
“One of my worries was ‘I have to travel, I have the Copa Libertadores and what happens to my children?’ “I told the guy at the bank, who was a River fan and always treated me very well, if there was any way I could get a duplicate, a copy of my card for my wife,” he continued, but the financial institution denied him.
“I’ll leave you a blood test, I need to do the market, the thing is that if I swipe the card there…,” Rondón continued and recalled: “Once I swiped the England card and the Bank of England called me and told me that I had an expense of 600 pounds on a purchase from a supermarket in Argentina.” “I couldn’t, I couldn’t, it was a headache“, lament.
Another example that Rondón gave was in relation to the request for criminal records. “When I’m going to sign for River, I’m already in the country, they tell me ‘we need criminal records.’ But which ones do they need? I take out the ones from Venezuela now because I have a Venezuelan passport. No, we don’t need those. We need those from England and also those from China. Because they were the ones from the last three years”.
The footballer came to Argentina from English club Everton and had previously played for Chinese team Dalian. In the case of the Asian country there was a drawback, since the procedure had to be personal, according to him. “You have to go in person. Get yourself a Chinese translator to order them in China,” he told River managers. “It was six months. I went bald, I got gray hair”, he expressed.
Rondón reiterated that he had no problems with the team, nor with the passionate atmosphere that football awakens. “The team, spectacular, and how to live football, spectacular. I needed to experience that, I wanted to play in the Libertadores. I played only 54 minutes. In a match as a substitute I was sent off because I punched one of Sporting Cristal’s players. It had like one thing… it was loaded,” he closed.
THE NATION
