Everton are trying to keep Salomon Rondon from travelling to join Venezuela in the international break, as they want him to stay and work on his fitness.
That’s according to Marca, who say the Toffees ‘prefer to be cautious’ with the striker after he arrived at the club without any pre-season training.
As such, he still needs to ‘get up to speed’, and they want to spend the international break working on his fitness to achieve that.
It’s something they did during the last break and want to repeat, thus keeping him out of Venezuela’s squad for the clashes with Ecuador and Peru.
Venezuela are bottom of their group with just seven points and ‘almost no chance of qualifying’ according to the newspaper, and Everton seemingly feel Rondon would be better served staying on Merseyside than travelling for those games.
Rondon has featured in every game since his arrival but has not looked fit for most of them, courtesy of arriving at the club with no pre-season training under his belt.
He has been training on his own after leaving CSKA Moscow, and while that saw him stay in ‘very good shape’, it is nowhere near the same as a full pre-season.
Everton, therefore, want him to stay on again during this international break in an attempt to catch up, although they are also aware that should he travel, he will miss one Premier League game on his return.
That would be less than ideal, give their shortcomings upfront, with Richarlison only recently returning from injury himself.
Ultimately it will be up to Rondon, and he’s publicly stated in the past how much he likes playing for his country, but he has missed the last two breaks at Everton’s request, so he could do so again this time around.
