The Hull City owner Acun Ilicali is tackling the question ‘Will you be tempted to sack your manager if you are bottom of the Premier League at Christmas?’ when Sergej Jakirovic walks through the room at the club’s training ground where our interview is taking place.
Given that everyone seems to be predicting the club to go straight back down to the Championship, this feels rather awkward.
Ilicali does not generally flinch, however, and as Jakirovic disappears into a side room, from where you suspect our conversation will remain entirely audible, he proceeds to explain why he and his manager are ‘completely matching’ in a way that he and Liam Rosenior, whom he dismissed two summers ago, were not.
So, does he think the Bosnian will be here this time next year? ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ Ilicali insists. ‘Some things happen unexpectedly in life. It’s like that in marriage. Are you always together until death? No. But if there are some failures, it will not be Sergej’s fault. Maybe the players will be young, inexperienced, new to the Premier League.
‘Of course, I will stand by him if he loses games. I will not be judging him by the position in the table. It will be what can we do more to make him successful.’
History tells us that it can be hard to sustain that magnanimity in the white heat of the Premier League, where battle will be rejoined this weekend as Hull entertain Manchester United.
Hull City owner Acun Ilicali is on typically honest and engaging form when he meets Daily Mail Sport on the eve of the new Premier League season
Ilicali is under no illusions about the scale of the task in front of him. ‘The next five years of the club’s history will be decided in the next two months,’ he admits
Ilicali recounts some very good reasons for belief in the 49-year-old Jakirovic, who took the club from the jaws of Championship relegation to the top flight, but the size of the challenge up ahead looks formidable. Ilicali has established a transfer budget, including transfer fees and wages, of £200million, in a break-neck process of squad-building which, he says, will see 15 new players through the door and be era-defining.
‘The next five years of the club’s history will be decided in the next two months,’ he relates. ‘And what we are trying to do is complicated. If you fail, you will be relegated. If you are not careful, you will have players you are then not able to sell. And at worst, this situation can be a disaster for a club.’
In an ideal world, Hull would be able to lure back Liam Delap, the loanee who did so much for the club two years back, but the wages Chelsea would want for sending him back to Humberside would, Ilicali reveals, be double the club’s average. ‘We love him and I hope he loves us but for this season, I didn’t even ask Chelsea.’
With typical candour, Ilicali declares that good players with Premier League pedigree – often cited as a necessity for the newly-promoted – will simply not be keen enough to justify him spending all summer chasing after them.
‘These boys don’t come easily,’ he says. ‘A good, experienced, successful player in the Premier League will have four or five options. Why should he choose a team that everybody thinks will be relegated?
‘It is easy to say, “Get the Premier League boys and be safe” but most of the boys you can bring from the Premier League will not be wanted by their club, so you will not be able to take the shiny ones. Manchester United or City will take those shiny ones, but they will not come to us.’
Instead, Ilicali and his recruitment team have looked further afield to the leagues of Germany, Italy, France and Spain which he – and there‘s a clear sense that the Turkish entrepreneur and media mogul is driving the thinking here – sees as close enough in quality to justify investment.
‘So instead of Premier League players past the top of their careers, I go for those who have the dream of playing in the Premier League,’ Ilicali says. ‘Boys who want to play in the best league in the world.’
‘Instead of players past the top of their careers, I go for those who have the dream of playing in the Premier League’
Ilicali owns a Rolls Royce with amber trim, and has now bought the property in Ferriby he was previously renting
A hands-on owner, he has spoken personally to every single player Hull have signed this summer
It means the new roster includes Nobel Mendy, a 22-year-old, £20million Senegalese centre back from La Liga’s Rayo Vallecano, Greek keeper Konstantinos Tzolakis, 23, from Olympiacos, and Lucas Gourna-Douath, also 23, from Red Bull Salzburg, with Real Betis winger Pablo Garcia in the club’s sights.
Teenage Australia defender Lucas Herrington has arrived from Colorado Rapids. A move for Everton’s Tim Iroegbunam, an excellent midfield ball-winner, is still conceivable despite a hamstring injury which will keep him out for three weeks.
The acquisitions illustrate a desire to spread the risk, prevent salary overload and potentially bring players who will prosper and bring sell-ons, giving Hull more money to reinvest.
As well as the uncertainty about how these players will fare in the white heat of the top flight, assimilating as many as 15 incomers – nine are through Hull’s door and six more are sought – can bring fiendish challenges. But Ilicali is unmoved by the ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ and adamant that good individuals, rather than proven individuals, are the ones for him.
‘I have to say something very clearly. This team has a family spirit and this brought us to the Premier League,’ he says. ‘We want hungry players, real professionals, dedicated people. I like the word “dedicated” in life. Dedicated people get success. So, “dedicated” is a word in our transfers.’ He’s spoken individually to every player they’ve signed, he says, and will continue doing so until the last one is in.
This is an individual who will certainly never die wondering what might have been. He rose from a job as a TV football reporter to become a multimillionaire reality TV entrepreneur. He sees this challenge as the latest of many.
‘We are ready for every scenario,’ says Ilicali. ‘This is life. Life can bring you anything. What we have to do is to make the correct choices, though make the risk as low as possible, for the future of the club.’
It cannot have helped, we put it to him, that no sooner had the side won promotion, he was parting company with his sporting director, Jared Dublin, whose CV had included time at Sheffield United during their ninth-place Premier League finish in 2020.
Hull’s much-changed squad now includes Nobel Mendy, a 22-year-old, £20million Senegalese centre back from La Liga’s Rayo Vallecano
There are high hopes for Greek goalkeeper Konstantinos Tzolakis after his move from Olympiacos
Ilicali says Dublin’s pay expectations after promotion in last May’s play-off win over Middlesbrough simply exceeded what he was willing to stretch to. ‘Jared just valued himself [at a level] which for our principle was not possible,’ he relates. ‘I respect him and wish him success. I respect everybody about their own careers. Football is so dynamic, tomorrow you do not know who will be with you.’
He has replaced the American with his compatriot Okan Ozkan, former assistant sporting director in the bearpit of Fenerbahce, with whom he worked for a year when juggling his media career and Hull ownership with a role overseeing the Turkish side’s football operations. ’It will be zero problem,’ he says of Dublin’s departure. ‘Okan is a very successful boy, who I have worked with in this setting, and he has a very good future. It will be seamless.’
The same booming confidence comes back when we put it to him that some people are projecting Hull to finish bottom of the league. ‘Some?’ he asks. ‘Not just some! Most of the predictions have us there! It’s like last year, when 80 per cent of the football people in England were thinking we were going to be relegated from the Championship.
‘I just hope that one day I am one of the analysts so I can see what this job is like. In Turkish there’s an expression: “Don’t talk from where you are lying.” [Yattığın yerden konuşma, literally ‘don’t pontificate from a position of comfort’.] ‘To those who are sceptics, I say: “Come here and see us first.”’
The evidence of the sea-change is visible at the club’s MKM Stadium, a few miles away, where building work to upgrade the club’s media facilities was ongoing in the heat of last Friday.
That lunchtime’s Hull Daily Mail reflected the sense of transformation. The back page lead featured new signing Mendy declaring: ‘I’m ready for the challenge.’ There was further analysis on one of the club’s targets, young Deportiva La Coruna star Yeremay Hernandez, while Herrington told the paper that his Hull move fulfilled a ‘dream’ of Premier League football. New defender Matt Targett declared himself ready to battle for a first-team place and striker Joe Gelhardt’s imminent move from Leeds United was also reported.
So, which promoted Premier League club are Hull modelling themselves on? ‘Leicester City ten years ago!’ Ilicali jokes. ‘That’s the best model of all! But no – I am humble, so I will say Brentford and Brighton – both clubs that have managed to be sustainable and successful in the Premier League.’
His distinctive Rolls Royce with amber Hull City trim is parked up outside and the weekend ahead would be spent overseeing building work on the detached property at rural Ferriby with views across the Humber Estuary which he has now bought, having previously rented it.
Ilicali says he will stand by boss Sergej Jakirovic after he delivered the miracle of promotion from the Championship last year
‘I love to be the “underdog”. And it would be as good as promotion this year to stay in the league’
He has been the only Premier League owner this summer to have offered regular engagement with his club’s fans over transfers on social media. His posting of national flags on Twitter/X, denoting the nationality of players incoming and egg timer icons, signalling work still underway, demonstrated that in so many ways he is not the typical Premier League owner.
‘I was seeing some fake information about some players that we were “interested” in, which was agents using us and giving unnecessary hope to my fans,’ he says. ‘I’ve always had a relationship with the fans of this club, that I think deserve to have transparency.
‘When I looked at our new transfer targets, I thought it was like the United Nations! Be proud that so many countries were now associated with our club. I’m someone who once queued for a ticket for games and this boy became the owner of this club, so I like to think that in some small way I’m representing the ordinary fan.’
It may encourage those Hull supporters wondering what on earth this autumn holds that he is already casting an eye to how next summer might be. ‘I love to be the “underdog”, because there’s no translation of this word in Turkish,’ Ilicali reflects.
‘It would be as good as promotion this year to stay in the league. And if we do stay up, people will maybe say: “Hull can fight for the top ten.” So then we can bring in the stars.’
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