Hull manager Sergej Jakirovic interview: 'Managing in the Premier League would be everything'

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Twelve months after avoiding relegation to League One by goal difference on the season’s final day, a resurgence made all the more unlikely by an EFL transfer embargo has carried them to within 90 minutes of a £200million promotion. “It’s like a dream this final, but maybe afterwards it will be a dream come true,” Sergej Jakirovic, whose appointment last summer sparked the revival, tells The Athletic. “We will do everything to get there. We will try to bring joy to Yorkshire.” Jakirovic attempts the local accent on the final word of that sentence and begins to laugh. He does that a lot; chuckling at the transfer embargo that landed within weeks of his arrival, the culture of spying in Croatian football and his side’s defensive record. “We conceded a lot of goals,” he says with a grin. “Sixty!” Turns out it was actually 66, more than Oxford leaked when relegated to League One. Yet Hull scored 70 of their own in an intrepid season, bettering the return managed in any of the club’s previous three promotions from the Championship in 2008, 2013 and 2016. Jakirovic is not a manager who appears to take himself too seriously, but he has excelled during his first season in English football. The 49-year-old, once an international centre-back with Bosnia and Herzegovina, is a self-confessed Anglophile and says he has modelled his energetic style on former Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp. “I have been following him since Mainz,” he says of Klopp. “He is gegenpressing, and I try to put this style of football into my teams. Especially the reaction after losing the ball. “Klopp did a great job at Mainz with a low budget, Borussia Dortmund, I can say an average budget compared to Bayern Munich. Liverpool, also, compared to Manchester City. He has always been very successful because he can change mentalities. His man-management is perfect.” Those at Hull say similar of Jakirovic. At a club that sacked Liam Rosenior, Tim Walter and Ruben Selles inside 12 chaotic months, its owner Acun Ilicali, the Turkish businessman, has found calm and stability with Jakirovic. The manager is a hugely popular figure with players, instilling cohesion and spirit in unexpectedly challenging circumstances. Jakirovic goes back to last summer when signing a two-year contract as manager in the wake of leaving Turkish club Kayserispor. “I started to watch the games where we needed to improve, which players we needed to bring in… then, bang, embargo!” It was three weeks after Jakirovic’s appointment that the EFL took a dim view of Hull’s late payments to Aston Villa over last season’s loan of Louie Barry. An “administrative error” was blamed, but a three-window embargo (later reduced to two on appeal) was placed upon the club to prevent them from committing any transfer or loan fees to Jakirovic’s rebuild. Experienced free agents, including eventual top scorer Oli McBurnie and Semi Ajayi, were recruited, alongside a smattering of loans, including Joe Gelhardt, John Lundstram and Amir Hadziahmetovic. It was an enforced shift from the opening years of Ilicali’s time as owner, where spending had been regular and often wasteful. Options were narrowed, but minds focused. “Sometimes from these players who are written off by everybody, you can find motivation and hunger for the challenge,” says Jakirovic. “It was like a puzzle. Maybe it was the best that it happened like this. This group of players became even closer. They had to stick together and help each other. Maybe this embargo helped us.” Promotion, though, was never the aim. Jakirovic can recall one pre-season prediction in the media that Hull would finish 23rd, and his own expectation was to end the campaign between “10th and 15th”. That appeared a fair assessment after only nine points were collected from the opening eight league games, but momentum soon built and the climb went higher. By the end of January, when winning 1-0 away to Blackburn Rovers, Hull were third and in touch with the automatic promotion places. A series of stumbles down the final straight soon realigned ambitions to the play-offs, and a 2-1 win over Norwich City on the last weekend allowed Hull to leapfrog Wrexham into sixth place. “Our target with Mr Chairman was top 10, but I thought that would be difficult,” says Jakirovic. “Then, around October, we started to have a number of wins, and already we were around the play-offs. My first goal was to reach 50 points. People would laugh at me, but then we kept going. “I cannot say it’s been stressful. The biggest stress was the season before, going to Portsmouth needing one point to stay in the division. Here we knew it would be a good season if we finished sixth, seventh or eighth. Now everything is possible because we are there. One game from the Premier League.” Hull have not been here, at Wembley, since 2016 when a squad featuring Andy Robertson, Harry Maguire and Tom Huddlestone beat Sheffield Wednesday 1-0 in the play-off final. That was a third promotion in eight years, a golden period that also included a run to the 2014 FA Cup final under Steve Bruce. The last decade has known more sorrow than joy, even dropping into League One at the end of the 2019-20 season, but Jakirovic has taken Hull back to a place, in Wembley, where they have never lost inside 90 minutes. Middlesbrough, rather than Southampton, are all that stand in the way. Jakirovic was speaking before the EFL’s independent commission came down heavy on Southampton’s subterfuge. Still, the change of opponent will not detract from this being the biggest day of his coaching career. Fifty tickets (“maybe more,” he says) have been sought to accommodate Jakirovic’s family and friends, including his two sons. The elder is a defender currently on the books of Inter Milan, the younger a goalkeeper at Dinamo Zagreb, the Croatia giants that Jakirovic led to the league and cup double in 2023-24. This evening will bring Jakirovic’s first trip to Wembley, a chance to familiarise himself on the eve of facing Middlesbrough. After all the noise of legal actions and repercussions in the build-up, tomorrow retains the potential to be a day that could change everything. “I am very proud,” he says. “ Football was born here. Managing in the Premier League would be everything to me. The best award in my coaching career.” Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms