Onana’s substitute, Cameroon’s goalkeeper against Brazil, experienced a turnaround and has also been removed

Cameroonian goalkeeper Devis Epassy, ​​29, had very few football prospects at the end of the 2016/17 season.

At 24, he was tired. He had never played in an elite division before – and came from few opportunities for the modest SAS Epinal, in the National 1, the third tier of French football.

There were 19 matches in the reserve and others without even being related of the 36 played by the team in the period.

The player’s agent then suggested an unusual proposal: seek a turnaround away from France, in the modest Levadiakos, from Greece, which would compete in the first division with a new coach, the Frenchman José Anigo, appointed as responsible for the blossoming of the Ivorian Didier Drogba in the Olympique de Marseille in 2003.

The right move changed the course of Epassy’s career.

The goalkeeper will be in the starting lineup for Cameroon in the match this Friday (2nd) against the Brazilian national team, at 4 pm (Brasília time), for the last round of the Group G phase of the World Cup.

“I remember that he arrived as the third goalkeeper, he had already gone through many difficulties in France. He saw Greece as an opportunity to change. He was paid very little before, so he did extra training and was very hardworking. He gained confidence and today he shows the goalkeeper that is”, tells the Sheet Brazilian midfielder Chumbinho, former teammate of the Cameroonian.

Epassy lives in the World Cup a kind of déjà vu of the comeback in Greece. He gained space after an unexpected problem involving starter André Onana, starter for the national team and Inter Milan. Until then, he had only five caps for the country.

Coach Rigobert Song warned the goalkeeper a few hours before the 3-3 draw with Serbia, last Monday (28), in a conversation at the Banyan Tree hotel, located in Msheireb, in the central region of Doha, that Onana would be removed for “disciplinary reasons”.

“In a group you have to respect the rules, I prefer to preserve the group than the individuals”, explained Song, right at the end of the game.

Onana responded later, in a statement, assuring that he “always behaved properly”, but left the delegation in Qatar. Even with three goals conceded, the debut was praised by the coach.

“He showed today that he can be André’s rival”, evaluated Song.

In Greece, despite the first season of redemption, with 26 games as a starter and even an assist for a goal, he suffered in the following season precisely with a removal.

After nine games as a starter, the goalkeeper was suddenly stopped by club officials for not accepting the contract renewal proposal.

“We were very close. He told me that he rejected a proposal to renew for five years and the president punished him for that. Epassy had an offer from Olympiacos, but they didn’t even want to hear it”, says Brazilian defender João Francisco Fávaro, also a teammate at Lavadiakos.

Months before Olympiacos officialized its interest, Epassy’s decisive performance to secure a 1-1 draw destabilized the country’s main club.

The president of Olympiacos at the time, Evangelos Marinakis, also owner of Nottingham Forest, from England, granted early vacation to the players and imposed a fine of 400,000 euros on the group (R$ 1.6 million at the time) for the poor result. The stumbling block cost the last chances in the local championship.

At the end of his second season with Levadiakos, the goalkeeper moved to Lamia and then moved to OFI, both in Greece. This year, he agreed with the Abha Club, from Saudi Arabia.

“Epassy was a great guy to get along with. He was always very close to the French, but he also liked the Brazilians. When he left, it caught my attention that he had an overly optimistic tone: ‘Don’t worry, João, everything is going to get better in my life ‘. I always questioned him for not playing”, remembers João Francisco.

In the team, in addition to the defender and midfielder Chumbinho, he also played with striker Brandão, with a long passage through French football and Shakhtar Donetsk, from Ukraine.

After debuting in the Cup, asked about Neymar’s absence, he minimized: “Neymar is a great player. I don’t know if he’s going to play and, honestly, I don’t care. We’re focused on us.”

Despite his title in Cameroon, the option for the country was a kind of tribute to his family members, Cameroonians – more specifically to his father, who also tried to be a player.

Epassy was born in Soisy-sous-Montmorency, a small French district of 17,000 inhabitants a few kilometers from Paris, and still resides in the French capital.

“It’s curious that I found out he was Cameroonian only when he was called for the first time. It was a good surprise”, adds João.

He now hopes to help the country return to the second round of a World Cup, a feat that has not occurred since the 1990 World Cup in Italy, when the Cameroonians finished in seventh place.

For this, Cameroon needs to beat the Brazilians and hope that Switzerland does not beat Serbia in a simultaneous confrontation at stadium 974.

In two meetings between the countries so far in Cups, in 1994 and 2014, two Brazilian defeats: 3 to 0 and 4 to 1, respectively.