Hull City owner Acun Ilicali has confirmed he will take legal action if his side lose to Middlesbrough in the Championship play-off final at Wembley this afternoon.
Ilicali had hinted earlier in the week that he would consider this course of action, after Middlesbrough were reinstated to the play-offs following Southampton’s expulsion amid the Spygate scandal, but has now confirmed his intentions.
The Tigers face Boro with a place in the Premier League at stake, with the play-off final commonly described as the richest game in football, worth around £200m to the winning team, and Ilicali is adamant Boro should never have been allowed back in after losing.
“Our legal team says that we have to go for action, that’s for sure,” Ilicali told BBC Radio Humberside ahead of kick-off at Wembley
“So we have no doubt about it. Here, all we want is justice. If justice is broken, nobody will enjoy football.”
Ilicali described the call to allow Middlesbrough to re-enter the play-offs as “an incredibly wrong decision”.
He added: “If this action was so big that a team is out of the play-offs, why didn’t they let them not play the semi-final, investigate and take Southampton out and put Wrexham in?
“Why is Wrexham out now? Put Wrexham in and continue the competition. For me, an eliminated team [being] put back – also our lawyers say this and that’s their opinion too – is an incredibly wrong decision.”
EFLchair Rick Parry was quick to dismiss the notion that the result of the play-off final could be overturned however,
When asked if he believed the result would stand, Parry told Talksport: “I hope so, yes of course. We have to move on, the season has to finish – players are going off to the World Cup on Monday. We all need clarity now and we all need certainty and what we have a habit of doing in football, all the precedents say that however frustrating it can be at times, you tend to look at punishments prospectively.
“If you had to unravel the whole of the previous season’s league table, you would never get a competition finished, so that is always a guiding principle: punishments happen forwards, not backwards.”
Southampton were expelled from the play-offs on Tuesday and their appeal was rejected the following day, handing Middlesbrough a reprieve – just 72 hours before the final.
The Saints admitted to spying on Boro’s training sessions ahead of the semi-final, clearly breaching EFL rules, and also admitted to spying on Oxford and Ipswich’s training before matches against those two sides earlier in the season.
Southampton accepted that their actions were wrong, and duly apologised, but remain adamant that the punishment handed down was too harsh. After their appeal was rejected, the club said: “While we fully acknowledge the seriousness of this matter and the scrutiny that has followed, the club has consistently believed the original sporting sanction was disproportionate, a view that has been widely shared by many in the football community.”
Ilicali, who took over Hull in 2022, had not been willing to discuss the independent disciplinary commission’s ruling before the day of the final in order to avoid distracting his players.
“Now I can talk a little more because now the boys are in the stadium and they will not hear me. I didn’t want to make their focus disturbed,” he added.
“Decisions are discussable from what I understand from our lawyers, very discussable. But of course we have to focus on the game and the boys are tough enough to overcome these difficulties.”
