Hull City’s Journey to the Premier League: Jakirovic’s Unlikely Rise
On a baking spring bank holiday in Hull, the fairytale reached its loudest chapter yet. Sergej Jakirovic stepped out on to the balcony of Hull City Hall, looked down at 40,000 people in black and amber, and flipped his own job description on its head.
“I only had one task before the season – to stay in the Championship … I failed. We’re going to the Premier League!” he roared, and the square erupted.
Forty‑eight hours earlier, Hull had clung on at Wembley, Oli McBurnie’s late strike sealing a 1-0 win over Middlesbrough in the Championship playoff final. One goal, one game, and one of the most improbable rises English football has seen in years was complete. This is a club that survived relegation to League One in 2024-25 on goal difference. Now they are back among the elite.
Jakirovic, an imposing former centre-half with a storyteller’s timing, has been cast as the unlikely alchemist at the centre of it all. He turned a team many expected to sink into a side that punched its way through the playoff pack and into the Premier League.
Three months on from those wild scenes in the city centre, the mood music around Hull has changed. The romance is still there, but the outside noise has grown harsher. Bookmakers have written them off. Pundits too. Hull are not just tipped to go down – they are being treated as a certainty.
On a podcast this week, former England internationals Carlton Cole and Joe Cole dismissed them with a laugh. “Hull are gone, man,” Joe Cole said. “They have spent £70m and I’d be stunned if they stay up. They have come in through the back door, they’ve slipped in.”
The comments landed badly on Humberside. Tigers supporters bristled. The club’s head coach, though, did not flinch.
Such barbs barely graze Jakirovic. Before Manchester United’s visit to the MKM Stadium on Saturday lunchtime, he cut an upbeat, almost mischievous figure.
“I’m buzzing,” said the 49-year-old. “Of course there’s a very big gap between the Championship and Premier League. We’re up against the best teams, players and managers and I’ve seen all the predictions. But it’s a great motivation to prove them wrong because we don’t have anything to lose.
“What we did last season was a very big achievement, but this is football and what happened yesterday doesn’t matter any more. We want to improve and show that we can develop to do even better as a team – and of course we need another miracle to survive. It will be an even bigger achievement than winning promotion if we manage to stay up. We need 40 points, so everything is very clear.”
For a city used to being the punchline, his words matter. Hull has long carried more than its share of negative headlines, and Jakirovic has given it something else: a team that makes people walk a little taller.
So when the jibes from the Coles filtered through, they struck a nerve. Jakirovic did not hold back.
“It was stupid and disrespectful towards the club and players because we earned everything on the pitch – nobody gave us anything for free,” he said. “It’s not fair, especially when it’s coming from ex-players who know how hard players work to reach the Premier League. If they were in my position they would fight, so it’s easy to say we’ll finish 20th, but can they bet on that? They can put everything on that or they can lose, so we will see. But we’re not here by accident.”
That defiance is matched in the boardroom. Acun Ilicali, Hull’s high-profile chairman, has already publicly backed his head coach, insisting he will keep faith with Jakirovic even if Hull go down. On the transfer front he has gone hard, sanctioning 11 new signings, breaking the club’s transfer record twice and accepting the accusation from some observers that the recruitment looks scattergun.
The squad is still incomplete. Several of those new faces are injured. More are expected.
“We’re expecting three or four more players,” Jakirovic confirmed. “We’ve signed some good players with potential, but I’m also aware that they need more time to adapt and build chemistry with the team.
“Mr Chairman and I have had a very good connection since our first meeting and we do everything together. In all decisions, we are always speaking and trying to improve our team in many ways.”
Hull’s surge back to the top flight – their fourth promotion to the Premier League since 2008 – has captured attention, but the man in the dugout carries a story that runs far deeper than league tables and transfer fees.
Born in Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina, then part of Yugoslavia, Jakirovic grew up in Metkovic in Croatia. His childhood was framed by the 1990s Balkan wars: running from fighter planes, diving for shelter, living with the sound of conflict overhead. That kind of upbringing does something to a person. It hardens perspective. It shrinks the size of football’s problems.
His playing career took him across central and eastern Europe, with spells in Slovakia, Slovenia and Bulgaria. Coaching became his second act, and it was a restless one – Hull are his eighth club in nine years. Last summer, he landed in East Yorkshire with little fanfare and even fewer guarantees.
Now he stands on the brink of the biggest test of his career, and he looks utterly unfazed.
“I always sleep like a baby because this is just sport at the end of the day,” he said with a smile. “I have to be fresh on Saturday; I also need to show my potential and prove that I can handle this stage. And I don’t have any doubt because I’ve showed already that I’m capable of doing some great things.”
The Premier League will try to crush that certainty. The predictions say it will. Jakirovic hears them all, shrugs, and reaches for another miracle.
