Kim Hellberg watched his Middlesbrough side walk out at Wembley on Saturday as the Championship play-off final kicked off at 3.30pm BST — a fixture that arrived after a week of off-field upheaval and an on-field moment that left players stunned.
The match itself turned on a single, surreal episode: Shea Charles’ cross evaded everyone and went into the net, leaving Middlesbrough’s players crestfallen. Hull City made one change to the side that beat Millwall in the semi-final second leg, Mohamed Belloumi replacing the injured Kyle Joseph, while Middlesbrough made one switch from their game at Southampton, Alan Browne coming in for the injured Tommy Conway. Hayden Hackney was named on the bench, hoping to make his first appearance since a calf injury in March.
The route to the Wembley final had been anything but routine. Southampton won the second leg of their semi-final 2-1 after 116 minutes before later being expelled; Middlesbrough were reinstated in midweek, only for Southampton’s appeal to be dismissed 24 hours later. The semi-final legs were played amid the 'Spygate' saga, and the late change to the line-up of finalists dominated the build-up as much as the normal pre-match nerves.
That background mattered inside the dressing rooms. Hellberg admitted he had been forced into unusual choices while waiting for a verdict: "I had to do something because we were waiting for [the verdict] and trying to put belief into people." He also explained how he sought distance from the circus around the club: "I took my son to Sweden; that was very nice for me. Drinking beer, watching a game, shouting at the referee from the stands." He did not hide the disruption to preparation: "We haven't trained [properly] since the last Southampton game."
Hull owner Acun Ilicali, speaking in the aftermath of the reinstatement, framed the dispute in stark terms and signalled possible legal action if promotion slipped away: "Our legal team says that we have to go for action, that’s for sure … so we have no doubt about it … all we want is justice … if justice is broken, nobody will enjoy football." He questioned the sequence of events that let Southampton play the semi-final before being removed: "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?"
The stakes were clear: the winner of this Championship play-off final would take the single, lucrative promotion spot to the Premier League. For Middlesbrough, the fixture reopened a long, mixed history in the play-offs — they won the second-ever Championship play-offs in 1988 by beating Chelsea over two legs, lost the final to Norwich City in 2015, and had fallen in the semi-finals in 1991, 2018 and 2023. For Hull, the match followed a season in which they avoided relegation to League One only by the skin of their teeth the previous year.
There was further texture to the meeting: Middlesbrough had beaten Hull 4-1 on Humberside earlier in the season, a reminder that formlines can be brutal and misleading. And while the spectacle at Wembley was the immediate story, the aftermath of the week — expulsions, re-admittance, appeals and threats of legal action — ensured this final would be judged off the pitch almost as fiercely as on it.
For Hellberg, the immediate test was practical and personal. He had told players to keep belief while the club navigated a verdict that disrupted training and plans; now, at Wembley, that belief would be tested on 90 minutes and whatever came after. The result would not only decide promotion: it would settle whether a team whose preparation was interrupted by the 'Spygate' saga and a midweek reinstatement could overcome both history and controversy to claim the prize.
