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Gerald Asamoah (; born 3 October 1978) is a German football executive and former professional player who works as the first-team manager of Schalke 04.
During his playing career, Asamoah played as a forward, and he was mainly known for his pace, his physical strength and his hard-working approach. He has bonded the most part of his career to Schalke, where he has been widely appreciated not only for his accomplishments as a player, but also for his relaxed and positive attitude and his role as a community leader off the pitch.
Asamoah kept working in Gelsenkirchen after his retirement, too, as he was offered several administrative and managerial roles throughout the years.
He immediately started playing football in several local teams, and entered the youth academy of Hannover 96 at the age of 16.
Asamoah left Schalke at the end of the 2009-10 season, having registered a total of 381 games, 64 goals and 45 assists (between the national league, national cups and continental competitions) for the club over eleven years.
However, the following year turned out to be more difficult than expected: Asamoah went goalless during the entire season, while the Kleeblätter finished at the bottom of the table, having won only four of their 34 league games, none of which were at home soil.
This was also Asamoah's last season in the Bundesliga, as he amassed the third highest number of substitutions ever in the league (139 times).
Having taken part in one more game for the senior side during a DFB-Pokal match in 2013, the striker played regularly in the Regionalliga West, before ultimately announcing his retirement in 2015.
He then went on to play in the 2002 and 2006 World Cups, mainly as a reserve, and ended up collecting a total amount of 43 international caps and six goals for the Germany national team.
In May 2021, the new-established sporting director Rouven Schröder decided to appoint Asamoah as Schalke's first-team manager for the following season, in collaboration with head coach Dimitrios Grammozis.
Asamoah's brother Lewis (born 1984) has played as a footballer, too, spending his whole career in the non-professional tiers of the German football league pyramid, while his cousin Emmanuel (born 1993) played in the youth ranks of St. Pauli and Hamburger SV before seemingly stepping out of football in 2013.
He suffers from a heart condition, named non-obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. In his case, the flesh lobe that separates the right and left heart chambers is extremely thick, which can cause an arrhythmic heartbeat. While this condition didn't hold him back entirely from playing, it was one of the main reasons behind his frequent struggles with fitness.
On 13 January 2016, Asamoah accepted the 2015 FIFA Fair Play Award on behalf of football organizations and clubs around the world, as he worked to support refugees in the face of conflict.
He has also been leading educational campaigns in public schools and speaking out against racism in several occasions. In August 2019, he openly criticized Schalke's chairman of the supervisory board, Clemens Tönnies, due to his controversial claims against African people during a convention on climate change and the future of the food industry in Paderborn: Tönnies eventually maintained his role within the club's board until his own resignment, almost a year after. In February 2020, Asamoah firmly condemned the racist insults directed towards opponent defender Jordan Torunarigha by Schalke supporters during a home cup match against Hertha BSC. In June 2020, Asamoah joined the group of players and board members across Bundesliga who reacted and manifested support to the protests across the United States and the world following the murder of George Floyd, saying quote: "If you have never experienced racism, you'll never find out what that truly means. It's a pain you carry inside yourself and you can't swallow it. I'll work even harder to visit schools and teach young people that we're all the same."
In 2021, he featured in , a documentary detailing the experiences of Black players in German professional football.
| + Appearances and goals by club, season and competition !rowspan="2" | Club !rowspan="2" | Season !colspan="3" | League !colspan="2" | DFB-Pokal !colspan="2" | Europe !colspan="2" | Other !colspan="2" | Total |
| Hannover 96 | 1996–97 | Regionalliga Nord | 5 | ||||
| 1997–98 | 20 | ||||||
| 1998–99 | 2. Bundesliga | 4 | |||||
| Schalke 04 | 1999–2000 | Bundesliga | 5 | ||||
| 2000–01 | 8 | ||||||
| 2001–02 | 7 | ||||||
| 2002–03 | 4 | ||||||
| 2003–04 | 5 | ||||||
| 2004–05 | 12 | ||||||
| 2005–06 | 4 | ||||||
| 2006–07 | 4 | ||||||
| 2007–08 | 11 | ||||||
| 2008–09 | 3 | ||||||
| 2009–10 | 1 | ||||||
| Schalke 04 II | 2003–04 | Regionalliga Nord | 0 | ||||
| FC St. Pauli | 2010–11 | Bundesliga | 6 | ||||
| Greuther Fürth | 2011–12 | 2. Bundesliga | 5 | ||||
| 2012–13 | Bundesliga | 0 | |||||
| Schalke 04 | 2013–14 | Bundesliga | 0 | ||||
| Schalke 04 II | 2013-14 | Regionalliga West | 6 | ||||
| 2014-15 | 2 | ||||||
| + Appearances and goals by national team and year | |
| Germany | 1 |
| 1 | |
| 0 | |
| 1 | |
| 3 | |
| 0 | |
| + List of international goals scored by Gerald Asamoah |
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| 2005 Confederations Cup |
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Greuther Fürth
Germany
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