Hull City owner Acun Ilicali talks to The i Paper's Mark Douglas about the 2024 sacking, the Tigers' transfer plans, and the search for a feeder club
Three weeks ago Acun Ilicali, the owner of Hull City, was walking in the dark when a young woman accosted him.
At first, from a distance, he had no idea who it was. But when she took out her phone and showed him a picture of her father, the pair embraced like family.
“I realised when she got closer it was Liam Rosenior’s daughter!” he says with a broad smile. A “fun” Facetime call with the new Chelsea boss then ensued.
The exchange says much about the bond between the two, which is all the more remarkable because it is less than two years since Ilicali fired Rosenior for finishing seventh in the Championship.
The dismissal looked harsh from the outside but there’s no bitterness. When Rosenior returns with his new Chelsea team for an FA Cup fourth round game next month, Ilicali says he’ll be “proud” of his success.
ISTANBUL, TURKIYE - JULY 04: English football club Hull City??s chair Acun Ilicali, head coach Liam Rosenior and player Liam Delap attend a news conference prior to the friendly matches of the team against Galatasaray and Hatayspor as part of ??Corendon Summer Tour 2023??, at Riva Hasan Dogan National Teams Camp and Training Facilities in Istanbul, Turkiye on July 04, 2023. (Photo by Muhammed Enes Yildirim/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Once upon a time at Hull: Liam Delap, Acun Ilicali and Liam Rosenior (Photo: Getty)
“Look, we are still very close friends,” he says.
“I will never forget the day we were almost relegated, he sent me a very emotional message. But business is something else. I have many friends but I can’t be in business with them.
“With Liam it was just different philosophies of football. I am a football fan – no, I’m a football maniac – who owns a club and I have some things in my mind I want to see on the pitch.
“For me Liam’s philosophy is a solid, fantastic philosophy but he’s more like a [Pep] Guardiola style of football. It’s perfect for Chelsea and their squad. I think he can deliver something to Chelsea like the first period of Jose Mourinho. But I don’t like Guardiola-style football, I like a different style.
“I don’t want to change Liam. I don’t want to pressure him to change so what I said to him when we separated was ‘You are successful, you will get another job easily’.”
And who knows? The two clubs could yet be meeting in next year’s Premier League because Ilicali’s Hull are the surprise package of the Championship season, strong contenders for automatic promotion on the watch of unheralded boss Sergej Jakirovic despite the club being hit with a transfer ban in the summer.
“I knew our squad was good but we had a fantastic summer recruitment period and Sergej is a leader,” he says.
But he plays down expectations: “Before the season my target was top 10. We are there now and I’m happy.”
Instead he measures the success of his four years by the “family” he has created in East Yorkshire. We speak after he’s just watched training following an eight-hour flight from the Dominican Republic. There is a staff game later – Turkey vs Croatia, Ilicali’s lot against Jakirovic’s – and a “buzz” about the training ground.
“If you ask me what my dream was at this club – first it was to make the club a family, be united and share success together. That came true here,” he says.
But they sense possibility and recruitment in January has been swift and decisive.
On top of the four signings they’ve already made Ilicali says a fifth is possible in the final days of the window. “Maybe there’ll be one more surprise,” he says, intriguingly.
Ilicali makes no bones about his frontline role in recruitment. Jared Dublin and the scouting team select the players, Ilicali gives his approval and then they go to the coach. It appears to work and Hull is a happy camp.
Star defender Charlie Hughes, for example, has been linked with a move to Crystal Palace but a January move is not anticipated.
“Charlie is so happy here, I’m so happy with Charlie,” Ilicali says. “If a player comes to us and says ‘I want to go’ and everything is correct, I would never stop a player from living his dream.
“But now Charlie is enjoying every moment, his eyes are shining when I see him. I don’t think January is the right time for Charlie. At the end of the season if he comes to me and says that he wants to leave, it’s possible.
“Look I have invested £100m in the club. It’s an investment but at some time it has to turn itself. It cannot rely on me investing £25m every year, that’s not a healthy project.
“So of course there has to be some sales every year to make the team better.”
Ilicali’s ambition remains undimmed. He’s hunting for another club to act as a junior partner to the Tigers where their academy players could get minutes to bridge the gap to the first team.
An unhappy stint as vice-president of Fenerbahce last year saw him take his eye off the ball in East Yorkshire and reminded him of how good things are at Hull.
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“At first I was just enjoying it. Now I’m an addict,” he says.
“Addicted to the city, addicted to the team. In the streets, people are hugging me and saying ‘Thank you for everything you have done for the club’.
“I fell in love with the club again when we went from fighting for promotion to fighting against relegation. There are big fan problems at some clubs in the Championship but last year, when we were almost relegated, not one fan said anything that annoys me. It’s an unimaginable feeling.”