Salomón Rondón’s move from Zenit St Petersburg to West Bromwich Albion began with a phone call from Tony Pulis to André Villas-Boas asking him if there was any talent in Russia he should be looking at. The Zenit manager replied that because of new restrictions on foreign players – a direct diktat, it is said, from Vladimir Putin, concerned by the national side’s poor performances in qualifying for Euro 2016 – he was having to offload Rondón. The 25-year-old Venezuelan, he believed, would thrive in the Premier League.

There are a number of oddities about that paragraph, starting with the fact that Pulis and Villas-Boas, whose styles of football are apparently so different, should be, if not necessarily friends, then at least close enough to ring each other for advice on signings.

West Bromwich Albion sign Venezuela striker Salomón Rondón for £12m Read more

Then there’s the fact that Putin, or at least his advisers, should be so concerned by soft power and the image Russia projects through football that he should take direct action to try to boost the production of local players in the domestic game. Villas-Boas, it is fair to say, was not impressed when the passing of the Federal Law on Physical Culture and Sport in the Russian Federation, authorising the Sports Ministry to set limits on the number of foreign players in team sports, was followed three days before the start of the Russian season by a ruling that Russian clubs would be restricted to six foreigners, rather than seven, as had previously been the case. “This limit is the end of the development of Russian football players,” he said. “When you cannot send your strongest lineup due to some restrictions or recommendations, you destroy competitiveness. This is the end of football in Russia.”

Appealing though the image of Pulis and Putin hunting together on horseback is – shirtless, presumably, and wearing matching baseball caps; they could perhaps take Nigel Pearson along in case of any issues with packs of wild dogs – there is something slightly weird about the Russian premier having a direct influence on West Brom’s transfer policy.

From Pulis’s point of view, he is getting a highly promising forward who has become available through no fault of his own: there is no question about his fitness, attitude or ability – he became available for reasons of bureaucracy beyond his control. Zenit still have nine foreigners in their squad and with the emergence of the towering target-man Artem Dzyuba, who has spent the last two years on loan at Rostov, Rondón became expendable.

Rondón got 13 league goals last season, leading the line in a 4-2-3-1, creating space for Hulk cutting in from the right, for Danny creating the play and for Oleg Shatov’s ministrations from the left. “As everyone knows, Rondón has gone because of the limitations we have with foreign players,” said Villas-Boas. “So the second-best scorer had to leave Russia. Of course our level has dropped without his contribution. Rondón is an excellent player and excellent person.”

Rondón is now 25 but he has been a regular for Venezuela since 2008. He really caught the eye in their first game at the 2011 Copa América, excelling as a hard-running front man, chasing down lost causes and holding the ball up as Venezuela held Brazil to a 0-0 draw. On that occasion, he had Miku buzzing off him, but often his lot for the national side has been not only as a lone front man but as a lonely front man, regularly isolated and left to scrap for whatever he can get without a team-mate within 30 yards.

It was to operate like that that he came off the bench for Miku on a freezing night in San Juan in the quarter-final of that year’s Copa as Venezuela mounted an improbable rearguard to hold off Chile and nick a late winner to reach the semis for the first time. And it was in that thankless role that he was deployed this year, scoring the winner against Colombia with a fine downward header having done much with his front-running to prevent José Pekerman’s side from ever building up the sort of sustained pressure that might have become intolerable.

Villas-Boas isn’t the only manager to whom Pulis turned for advice; he also spoke to Manuel Pellegrini, who had Rondón in his squad at Malaga.

“Speaking to Manuel and André, who’ve both worked with the lad, he comes highly recommended,” said Pulis. “We’ve watched him. He’s played at the top level and he looks a good player: quick and powerful, good goalscoring record.”

Rondón, who after his £12m move now occupies the top three slots in the list of Venezuela’s biggest transfers (although this deal fell short of the £15.8m deal that took him from Rubin Kazan to Zenit in January last year) and is hugely popular at home – so much so that he was on the shortlist to be on the box for the Latin America version of this season’s Fifa game, only to be beaten by Juan Cuadrado.

As he noted in a stilted interview broadcast on the big screens at the Hawthorns before Monday’s defeat to Manchester City, Venezuelans will now start watching West Brom (he also claimed to be excited by the “various pitches” at the club training ground, a surprisingly enthusiastic reaction that makes you think he should only be allowed into the Bullring under careful supervision).

“He’s 25 years of age and still to fulfil his full potential,” Pulis said. “We hope he hits the ground running of course but understand it might take him time to settle. I’m sure our fans will help him and get behind him. But we feel with age on his side and the prices English clubs are asking for their players, it’s a deal worth doing.”