Hull City beat Middlesbrough 1-0 at Wembley on Saturday to win the Championship play-off final and return to the Premier League for the first time in nine years. Oli McBurnie scored the only goal in second-half stoppage time, turning a tight final into a celebration that spilled through every corner of the Hull support.
The result capped a remarkable climb for a club that had dropped into the third tier five years ago and, as recently as last season, finished 21st in the 24-team Championship. Hull survived only on goal difference on the final day, then rebuilt under manager Sergej Jakirovic, who was hired in June. Owner Acun Ilicali, who bought the club from the Allam family in January 2022, watched the team deliver the most valuable win of his tenure.
McBurnie joined Hull as a free agent three days before their opening match, a late arrival that now looks decisive. Hull also spent much of the build-up under the pressure of an EFL transfer embargo imposed in the summer, which prevented the club from signing players for a fee over three windows before that sanction was reduced to two windows on appeal. The restrictions left the squad thin, and the margin for error even thinner.
That made the final week unusual even by play-off standards. Hull had prepared for Southampton over four training sessions before Southampton were expelled from the EFL’s showpiece event after qualifying for it. That left Jakirovic’s side with only one training session focused on Middlesbrough, after Southampton admitted to spying on Middlesbrough in training ahead of their semi-final. The switch forced Hull to adjust quickly, but it also stripped away some of the clutter that can build around a final.
Jakirovic said after the match that a lot of players were crying, “of course from happiness,” adding that the club had not yet fully grasped what it had achieved. He called it an unbelievable journey and said so many problems had been overcome. His assessment fit the night at Wembley. Hull were not the flashiest side, but they were the team that handled the strange season best and found the one moment that mattered.
The promotion matters now because it completes a turnaround that began with survival by the slimmest of margins and ended with a place back among England’s top-flight clubs. What comes next is a return to Premier League football, but the larger story is how Hull got there: a winter and spring shaped by embargoes, a managerial change in June, a free signing in August, and one stoppage-time strike that rewrote the club’s direction.
