Rémy Descamps is a French goalkeeper who joined Lyon in August 2024 to act as a backup for Lucas Perri. It’s a role to which the twenty-eight year old has become accustomed in recent years, having spent the majority of the previous three seasons sitting on the bench for Nantes.
Perri has been ever present so far this season in the league, so opportunities have been few and far between for Descamps. He had to wait until November for his first taste of action, when he was thrown into a reserve team match at Chambéry and kept a clean sheet in a 2-0 win.
His first team debut came five days later away at Hoffenheim in the UEFA Europa League when Perri was rested. Descamps was beaten twice from close range but also made some fine saves in a 2-2 draw. His only other appearance to date came in the Coupe de France Fifth Round when Perri was again rested for the 2-1 win against Entente Feignies Aulnoye.
A student of the game
Rémy Descamps was born in the suburbs of Lille in the far north of France and was on the books of the Lille OSC academy until his early teens. At that point, his family decided that the best way to build on his early promise as a goalkeeper was to send him to the renowned Académie des Gardiens de Buts (Academy of Goalkeepers) in Bagnères-de-Luchon for a year. So the young Descamps traveled the length of France to study the art of goalkeeping in the picturesque surroundings of the Pyrenees.
Upon graduating a year later, he moved to Clermont-Ferrand in the central Auvergne region to join the academy of local club Clermont Foot. After a couple of years representing their youth teams, Descamps was picked up by Qatari-owned sports washing project Paris Saint-Germain. He experienced success with the PSG U-19 team, winning the national U-19 championship in 2016 and reaching the UEFA Youth League final in the same season, where they lost 2-1 to Chelsea.
Gaining experience in the lower leagues
Rémy Descamps also began to feature in the PSG reserve team playing in the fourth tier CFA Groupe A in the 2015-16 season and soon became their first choice between the sticks. He represented them for two and a half seasons, even making a handful of appearances on the first team bench when a senior goalkeeper was unavailable. By January 2018 the time was ripe for him to gain some experience at a higher level, so he was loaned out to struggling Ligue 2 outfit Tours for the second half of the season.
Descamps went straight into the first team at Tours and was ever present until the end of the campaign, but was unable save them from relegation as they remained firmly rooted to the bottom of the table throughout his sojourn at the club. The following season he was loaned out again by PSG, this time back to Clermont Foot. Installed as their first choice goalkeeper, he helped them to a respectable tenth place finish in Ligue 2 and also earned his first and only call-up to the France U-21 squad.
Warming benches in Belgium
The following summer, in August 2019, Descamps ended his six-year relationship with PSG by signing for Belgian Jupiler Pro League club Charleroi for a fee of €400,000. However, his route to the first team there was blocked by his experienced compatriot Nicolas Penneteau and Descamps found himself confined to the bench.
He was still awaiting his debut when everyone found themselves confined to their homes by the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020 and the Belgian football season was abandoned. It wasn’t until December 2020, some sixteen months after joining, that Rémy Descamps finally made his Charleroi debut. In January 2021, with Penneteau suspended following a red card, Descamps grabbed his chance and held on to the number one spot for the remainder of the season.
Cup heroics but final frustration
In summer 2021 he was on the move again. This time the destination was Nantes where manager Antoine Kombouaré signed him as back-up for first choice goalkeeper and club captain Alban Lafont. Although Descamps didn’t make a single Ligue 1 appearance in the 2021-22 season, he was installed as the club’s ‘cup goalkeeper’ and he played in every round as The Canaries made it to the final.
Descamps was instrumental in that run, keeping clean sheets in the first four rounds and saving penalties in shoot-outs against both Sochaux and later AS Monaco in the semi-final. However, Lafont was preferred for the final itself so Descamps had to watch the 1-0 victory over OCG Nice from the bench. The Coupe de France winner’s medal will have provided him with some consolation and it remains the only major honour of his career to date.
The 2022-23 season was a remarkably similar story. Descamps made just a single appearance in Ligue 1, but was again the cup goalkeeper and again helped them through a couple of penalty shoot-outs on the way to the final. He notably kept a clean sheet against Lyon in a 1-0 semi-final victory, but he was again overlooked for the final itself and had to watch from the sidelines as Nantes suffered a bruising 5-1 reversal to Toulouse.
Opportunities were not much more forthcoming the following season. Descamps played a handful of Ligue 1 matches while Lafont was injured, but never managed to retain his place in the team, so he decided to walk away at the end of the campaign when his contract expired, which is when Lyon picked him up as a free agent.
