Hull City are 90 minutes from a £200million promotion, and Sergej Jakirovic says the chance to take them back to the Premier League feels almost unreal. “It’s like a dream this final, but maybe afterwards it will be a dream come true,” the Hull manager said on the eve of the Championship play-off final at Wembley.
Hull will face an opponent in the final tomorrow, with the winner earning the last place in the Premier League for 2025-26. For Jakirovic, a 49-year-old who arrived last summer on a two-year contract after leaving Turkish club Kayserispor, the stage is one he has been building toward since he took over a club that had spent the previous season fighting to avoid the drop. Hull stayed up on goal difference on the final day 12 months ago. Now they are one result away from the richest prize in English football.
Jakirovic has made no secret of what the occasion means. “We will do everything to get there. We will try to bring joy to Yorkshire,” he said, as Hull prepared for what could be the club’s fourth promotion from the Championship, after previous successes in 2008, 2013 and 2016. He also admitted how close the club was to another collapse before his arrival. “I started to watch the games where we needed to improve, which players we needed to bring in… then, bang, embargo!”
The rebuild was never straightforward. Three weeks after Jakirovic’s appointment, the club were placed under a three-window embargo after late payments to Aston Villa over last season’s loan of Louie Barry. The EFL later cut that to two windows on appeal, but it still left Hull unable to pay transfer or loan fees during the manager’s first summer. Even so, the club brought in free agents including Oli McBurnie and Semi Ajayi, while Joe Gelhardt, John Lundstram and Amir Hadziahmetovic arrived on loan.
What Jakirovic has built has been as much about order as ambition. Hull were coming through 12 chaotic months, with repeated managerial changes before he arrived, and the owner found a more settled figure after a period that threatened to pull the club apart. The results have followed. Hull scored 70 goals this season, conceded 66, and stayed in the hunt long enough to give themselves a shot at Wembley.
Jakirovic’s own football education helps explain why the approach has worked. “I have been following him since Mainz,” he said of a coach he admires. “He is gegenpressing, and I try to put this style of football into my teams. Especially the reaction after losing the ball.” He added of the relationship with his players: “His man-management is perfect.”
That blend of control and urgency has given Hull a route back from the edge of the Championship to the brink of the Premier League. Jakirovic was careful not to overstate what lies ahead, but he did not hide the scale of it either. “Managing in the Premier League would be everything,” he said. For Hull, the next 90 minutes will decide whether a season that began with survival fear ends with a return to the top flight.
