Akwasi Asante

Asante was born in Amsterdam to Ghanaian parents.[2] He played at amateur club Neerlandia, which then merged with two other clubs to form Blauw-Wit Amsterdam.[3] As a youngster he had interested Ajax, but he chose to join HFC Haarlem's youth academy, where he spent three years before the family moved to the UK when he was 13. He played for Wednesbury Sports Union in the Walsall Junior Youth League before joining Birmingham City F.C.'s Academy, where he began a two-year scholarship in July 2009.[2][4][5]

In the 2010–11 season, Birmingham chose not to enter a reserve team in a competitive league, but Asante was a regular member of the under-18 Academy team and played in the Birmingham Senior Cup. In October 2010 he scored five goals as the under-18s beat Tottenham Hotspur's under-18s 6–0.[4] This performance contributed to his first competitive involvement with the first team a few days later, when he was named among the substitutes for the League Cup fourth-round tie against Brentford.[4] Asante signed his first professional contract, of two-and-a-half years, in January 2011.[6] Injury kept him out for four months,[7] but he was an unused substitute for Birmingham's last two Premier League games of the season, against Fulham and Tottenham Hotspur.[8]

He was part of the Birmingham squad for their 2011 pre-season visit to Ireland, and came close to scoring in the second half of the friendly against Cork City, when he appeared to be brought down after touching the ball past the goalkeeper, but no penalty was awarded.[9] In the absence through injury of strikers Cameron Jerome, Marlon King and Nikola Žigić,[10] Asante was named in the 20-man squad for Birmingham's Europa League match against Nacional in Madeira in August. An unused substitute in the first leg,[11] he made his first-team debut in the second leg on 25 August, replacing Chris Burke in the 88th minute as Birmingham won 3–0 to qualify for the group stage.[12]

On 1 January 2012, Asante moved to Northampton Town of League Two on a one-month loan deal.[13] He went straight into the starting eleven for their match the following day, away to Shrewsbury Town, and after 22 minutes he collected a cross from Lewis Young and rounded the goalkeeper to set up the opening goal for Saido Berahino. The match finished as a 1–1 draw.[14] In his second game for the club, he "took advantage of a slip by his marker to carry the ball inside another challenge and smack a right-footed shot inside Barry Roche's near post", his first league goal which proved to be the winner as Northampton beat Morecambe 2–1.[15] He returned to Birmingham at the end of the month having scored once from three appearances.[16]

Asante was part of the Birmingham squad that went on a tour to Austria ahead of the 2012–13 season.[17] He was preferred to Žigić for the visit of Bolton Wanderers in September because manager Lee Clark wanted a striker with pace available among the substitutes if needed.[18] He tore a hamstring playing for the development squad in October. The injury took considerably longer than expected to heal,[19] and Asante did not return to development squad duty until March 2013.[20] Ahead of the transfer deadline, Asante joined Shrewsbury Town on loan until the end of the League One season,[21] and made his debut as a late substitute in a 2–2 draw away to Carlisle United. In seven games for Shrewsbury he scored once, the third goal in a 3–2 defeat of Portsmouth on the last day of the season.[22]

Asante signed a new one-year contract with Birmingham in June 2013, with an option for the club to extend it for a second year.[23] He rejoined Shrewsbury on loan, initially for a month, ahead of the 2013–14 season.[24] A hamstring injury delayed his second debut for the club until the fourth match of the season, a 2–0 win at home to Swindon Town.[25] Birmingham recalled Asante on 19 August as cover, with two strikers injured and another free to leave the club.[26] However, injury prevented his involvement in Birmingham's next match and disrupted his season.[27] He returned to action in April 2014 with four goals in a development squad match against Huddersfield Town, leading manager Lee Clark to suggest he might still have a future at the club,[28] but it was later confirmed that he would leave when his contract expired at the end of the season.

Asante was without a club for some months while recovering from injury. On 16 December 2014, he signed for Conference Premier club Kidderminster Harriers until the end of the season.[29] He made his debut as a second-half substitute as Kidderminster beat Lincoln City with a goal in stoppage time,[30] and finished his spell with 11 appearances without scoring.[8]

He then moved on to National League North club Solihull Moors, for whom he appeared regularly, as starter or substitute in about equal measure.[8] Asante was part of the Solihull Moors team during the 2015–16 season that secured promotion to the National League for the first time in their history, clinching the National League North title.[31] In May 2016, Asante played in the Birmingham Senior Cup final as Solihull Moors won the competition for the first time, beating Birmingham City 2–1 at St Andrew's.[32]

On 18 January 2017, Asante signed an 18-month contract with newly promoted League Two club Grimsby Town.[33]

Injury meant Asante missed the last few weeks of the season and the first couple of months of 2017–18. To regain match fitness, he returned to Solihull Moors in mid-October on loan until January 2018.[34] On 7 February 2018, Asante left Grimsby by mutual consent.[35]

On 9 February 2018, Akwasi was unveiled as a Tamworth player, signing an 18-month contract under new caretaker manager Mike Fowler, who suggested that Asante could help fill the void left by the departure of Reece Styche to National League North rivals Darlington.[36] He scored 3 goals from 14 league appearances in what remained of the season,[8] at the end of which Tamworth were relegated to the Southern League. He was not a regular starter in the 2018–19 season, and at the end of November 2018, he joined National League North club Chester on a month's loan, with a view to a permanent move.[37]

Asante went straight into the starting eleven for the match on 1 December, at home to Darlington, and scored a perfect hat-trick – one headed goal, one right-footed and one left-footed – to complete a 3–1 win.[38] He scored in each of his next two matches,[8] and completed a permanent move to Chester on 3 January 2019, signing an 18-month contract. The undisclosed fee was a club record.[39] However, knee damage sustained in the final match of his loan spell kept him out until 9 February, by which time Chester had dropped out of the play-off places.[40] On his return, he scored in each of his first two league matches, but was soon out of action with a recurrence of the previous injury. From mid-March onwards, he played in six matches and scored twice as Chester finished ninth in the table. He hoped that full participation in pre-season training would help him play a greater part in 2019–20.[8][41]

He missed the first two weeks of pre-season with hamstring trouble, and a groin strain in a friendly kept him out of the first three matches of the new season.[42] On his first appearance, he came on as a second-half substitute and converted a stoppage-time penalty to secure a draw away to Kettering Town on 13 August.[43] Over the next four weeks of the campaign, he played seven matches and scored ten more goals, including a hat-trick at AFC Telford United that took Chester second in the table.[8][44] By the time the season was abandoned because of the COVID-19 pandemic, he had 19 goals from 29 matches in all competitions.[45][46]

On 5 June 2020, Asante signed for National League North club Gloucester City.[47] He scored eight goals in the first nine league matches of the season.[8]

Manager James Rowe left Gloucester for National League club Chesterfield on 26 November 2020. The following day, having met a clause in the player's contract that allowed him to move to a higher-level club, Asante became Rowe's first signing.[48][49] Asante made his debut for the club that weekend, and scored his side's first goal as they came back from 1–0 down to beat Weymouth 2–1.[50] After scoring nine goals in fifteen appearances in all competitions for the club since joining, Asante signed a new contract on 5 March 2021 that would keep him at the club until 2024,[51] rewarding the club's decision with his tenth goal the following day in a 3–0 victory over Yeovil Town.[52] Five weeks later, he ruptured an ACL and was ruled out for an estimated nine months.[53]

Asante returned to first-team action on 28 December 2021, playing the first hour of a 1–1 draw with FC Halifax Town.[54] During his third appearance, he scored Chesterfield's goal in a 5–1 loss to 2021 Champions League winners Chelsea in the third round of the FA Cup.[55] He scored six goals from 23 league appearances,[8] helping his side reach the play-offs, but an injury kept him out of that campaign, in which Chesterfield lost to Solihull Moors in the semi-final.[56][57] He was transfer-listed at the end of the season.[58]