Emmanuel Gyasi Finds Purpose Again as Palermo Pushes for Promotion
It has been a turbulent first half of the decade for Palermo. After incorrectly submitting their standard application to the Italian Football Federation and failing to provide evidence of a valid insurance policy, the Rosanero were relegated from Serie B to the amateur divisions in July 2019. Unione Sportiva Città di Palermo was replaced by a phoenix club, Società Sportiva Dilettantistica Palermo, which would go on to finish atop Serie D before being renamed Palermo Football Club. After two years in Italy’s third division, Palermo ascended to Serie B in 2022, finishing ninth, sixth, and eighth in the table. Today, however, Palermo finds itself in the midst of a jam-packed promotion race, and one player who is proving crucial is Emmanuel Quartsin Gyasi.
Born on January 11, 1994, in Palermo, Gyasi spent the first four years of his life in Sicily before moving to Ghana, the homeland of both of his parents. He spent seven years in West Africa before returning to Italy, this time to Pino Torinese, where his parents had since moved, and officially launched his footballing development with Polisportiva Pecetto in 2007.
“Living in Ghana was very important for my career; it helped to shape me. I was born in Palermo and then went to Ghana at a very young age to live with my grandparents and see where I come from and where my parents come from,” stated Gyasi in an exclusive R.Org interview. “Growing up in Ghana built me up a lot as a person. I learned a lot there, playing football in the streets with my friends. It didn’t matter that we didn’t have any boots to play with, it didn’t matter that we didn’t have a football; we’d go and make a ball out of something and enjoy ourselves playing barefoot … we appreciated the little things, we didn’t need the big things in order to be happy.”
Leading Spezia to Uncharted Territory
Gyasi earned interest from Torino and Genoa, choosing the former to be closer to home, and started off with Torino’s youth academy before spending a year on loan at Pro Vercelli. He was then recalled to Torino’s Primavera side, racking up 13 goals in 29 appearances in 2013–14, training with the first team and even making the matchday squad, but he never managed to make his debut for the Granata. Instead, Gyasi honed his skills at Serie C sides Pisa and Mantova before heading to Carrarese, where he scored five goals and three assists in 24 appearances. But after missing the final two months of the 2015–16 season with a metatarsal fracture, Gyasi then cut ties with Torino and joined Spezia, followed by loan spells at Pistoiese and Südtirol.
After bouncing around Piedmont, Tuscany, Lombardy, and South Tyrol, Gyasi finally made his mark in Liguria after being drafted into Spezia’s first team. Having patiently bided his time in Italy’s third division, Gyasi finally got his chance to impress in Serie B, scoring three goals and five assists in 34 appearances across the 2018–19 season and spearheading Spezia to the verge of promotion, only to lose to Cittadella in the first round of the playoffs.
Gyasi kicked off the 2019–20 season with a goal and an assist against Pro Patria in the Coppa Italia before failing to score in his next 16 matches, but he would nevertheless enjoy a post-Christmas resurgence and finish with 10 goals and six assists in 39 appearances. He took his game up a notch under new manager Vincenzo Italiano, now Bologna coach, leading them past Chievo Verona and scoring the winner in their first-leg win against Frosinone in the promotion playoff finals. Both teams won 1–0 away from home, but it was Spezia who earned promotion after finishing the regular league season five places above eighth-placed Frosinone. For the first time since their founding in 1906, Spezia were going to play in Italy’s top tier.
“I came to Spezia when we were playing in the second tier; we did well in our first year, and in the second year, we won the Serie B. This is a club that had never played Serie A in its 114-year history, and we were able to play in Serie A for three seasons. Alongside my teammates and some great coaches, we were able to make history and win some important games, and I was even able to captain them in Serie A. Spezia was an important chapter in my life, one that I keep in my heart to this day.”
Making His Mark for the Black Stars
He proved essential as Spezia punched above their weight and finished 15th in the table, six points clear of the drop. Operating both as a left winger and a right winger, Gyasi took to Serie A like a duck to water, firing in five goals and six assists in 39 appearances, including a goal in their Coppa Italia quarterfinal defeat to Napoli. He began March 2021 by meeting Cristiano Ronaldo, one of his childhood idols, alongside Ronaldinho and Alessio Cerci, before ending the month by making his Ghana debut and playing the full 90 in a 1–1 draw in South Africa in AFCON qualifying.
Gyasi returned to the national team in the following window, coming off the bench in a 1–0 loss to Morocco before starting in a 0–0 draw against Ivory Coast, both friendlies, but he hasn’t been back since then. However, just like he never gave up his ambitions of playing in the Italian top division despite his delayed progression in Serie C, he isn’t saying goodbye to his dreams of representing the Black Stars again.
“Making my Ghana debut was a great moment for me, but mostly for my mom and dad. Playing for your country is the biggest achievement that you can have as a player, because you’re representing a whole nation, you’re representing where you come from. It was one of the proudest moments of my entire career, and it was very nice playing in front of many people in Africa and Ghana. I’m not closing the door on a potential return; I have a good relationship with the coach, Otto Addo, and I even talk to him from time to time. I don’t consider my time with the national team closed, because anything can happen, and I’m always available to play for them. If the call comes, why not?”
“Whenever I played with the national team, everybody would be singing on the bus right before the game. We’d have one person pick a song, and everybody’s singing, even the coach, all the players, and after the music finishes, another player picks a different song for us to sing. This kind of thing doesn’t normally happen in Europe or Italy, because when you are going into a game, everybody on the bus is plugged into their headphones and concentrated on the game ahead of them.”
Ever since returning from Ghana in June 2021, Gyasi has stayed put in Italy and continued to build his footballing identity, helping the Aquilotti stay afloat under new manager Thiago Motta and finish 16th in the table. Gyasi solidified himself as a jack-of-all-trades, playing as a left winger, left center forward, right winger, second striker, attacking midfielder, central midfielder, and left back. He contributed six goals in 37 appearances, including goals against Juventus and Milan, helping them achieve famous wins against Napoli and Milan. Following Motta’s departure, Gyasi graduated to full-time captain in 2022–23 and chipped in with two goals and one assist in 36 appearances, but he was unable to keep them up in the top flight.
Returning to His Birthplace
Rather than stick around in the second tier, Gyasi returned to Tuscany and joined Serie A outfit Empoli for €2 million, where, after gradually ascending the pecking order, he became one of the first names on the team sheet over the second half of the season. Gyasi’s experience and versatility proved essential throughout the campaign, providing one goal and three assists in 34 appearances as Empoli staved off the drop by a point. However, he was unable to conjure up his magic in 2024–25 as the Azzurri Empolesi suffered relegation on the final day following a defeat to Hellas Verona, scoring two goals and three assists in 43 appearances. Desperate for a fresh start, he opted to return to where it all began, moving to Palermo on loan with a conditional obligation to buy.
“The people in Palermo are fantastic. The atmosphere is different from every other place I’ve been in Italy. Palermo fans are incredible, because every home game there’s crazy support, and every away game we also hear their amazing support. I want to tell them to continue supporting us, and surely we’re going to try to give them their very best. Personally, I’m going to try to do more and give them my best. When a team like Palermo calls you, when a coach like Pippo Inzaghi calls you, it’s difficult to turn down the call. It was a combination of things where, when that call from Palermo came, it was impossible for me to say no, and I’m very happy that I accepted.”
After commencing the season as a starter, Gyasi missed over two months of action after suffering a right calf injury in training. He returned to action on December 20, coming off the bench in a 2–2 draw against Avellino before starting in a 1–0 win against Padova. And after riding the bench in their 1–1 draw against Mantova, Gyasi played the first half of their 1–0 win against Spezia on Sunday. Palermo has won five of their last seven matches, and they sit fourth in the table at the season’s halfway point, one point behind Monza, four behind Venezia, and five behind league leaders Parma.
Palermo sits three points above Cesena, five above Modena, six above Catanzaro, seven above Juve Stabia, and 10 above ninth-placed Empoli. While the top two sides automatically earn promotion, fifth through eighth compete in the qualification playoffs for a chance to advance to the promotion playoff semifinals, where they would face third and fourth. Boasting the league’s third-best attack, 30 goals scored, as well as the best defense, 14 conceded, Palermo find themselves in a promising position as they look to return to the promised land for the first time since 2016–17, and they’ll be counting on Gyasi to deliver the goods in their upcoming trip to Modena as they look to extend their unbeaten streak to nine matches on Saturday.
“We’re trying to reach our dream day by day, game by game … we’re trying to build a nice house. We are building it now, so hopefully by May, we will have a nice house built. But I don’t want to think about May; I want to focus on our upcoming game on Saturday against Modena. We all dream of promotion, but the most important thing is to take things game by game, as the coach tells us every game. If you set your mind to something far away in the distance, you aren’t concentrating as well as you can on the task at hand. For me, we have a good team, a good coach, and the fan atmosphere here in Palermo is great. The biggest thing is that we must listen to the coach and go game by game, and continue constructing our house, and hopefully we’ll have a very nice house built by the time we reach the finish line.”