Hull City are back in the Premier League after Oli McBurnie scored an injury-time winner in a 1-0 victory over Middlesbrough in the Championship playoff final at Wembley. The goal settled a tense afternoon and sent Hull into the top flight for the first time in nine years.
McBurnie’s strike was the moment Hull needed after a season that had already pushed the club to the edge. Last year they avoided relegation to League One only on goal difference, and before this final they were operating under a two-window transfer fee embargo that allowed them to sign only free agents. Sergej Jakirovic, the Hull manager, said afterward that the scale of the turnaround was hard to take in. “With so many problems, everything that we achieved with the Premier League is unbelievable,” he said.
The final was still more unusual because Hull did not originally know who they would face. The playoff was reshaped after Southampton were thrown out for spying on rivals’ training sessions, and Middlesbrough came in as the replacement after already losing in the semi-final. That made Boro the first team in Football League history to be defeated in both the playoff semi-final and final.
For Middlesbrough, the defeat capped a bruising week. Kim Hellberg said the spygate fallout had made the past two weeks the toughest of his life and that the side had suffered “two heartbreaking losses in one week.” He added that it had been draining emotionally, but said Hull had scored the goal and deserved congratulations. “We were ready to play the game,” he said. “When the game ends you feel very empty.”
Jakirovic also turned his frustration toward the strange route the final took. Hull had spent a week preparing to face Southampton before switching plans only a few days before kickoff. He said the club had been described as collateral damage in the spying episode. “When I heard for the first time, I start to laugh because what you can spy?” he said. “To send a guy to do this, I don’t understand.”
Even so, he said Hull had kept its focus on the football. “We didn’t speak about this case at all. We just spoke about what we need to do to focus concentration,” he said. “The most important thing is we won today.”
What comes next is far from simple for either club. Hull now have to build quickly for the Premier League after surviving last year’s near miss and playing under transfer restrictions, and Jakirovic said the club would try to add better players while keeping the core that won promotion. “We will try to add better players than we have right now,” he said. “But I think these main players who bring us to the Premier League can stay and help us as well.” Southampton, meanwhile, will start next season with a four-point deduction, the latest cost of a saga that changed the playoff picture and ended with Hull celebrating at Wembley.
