LONDON -- As referee Jarred Gillet blew the whistle at Wembley on Saturday, perhaps there were some in the EFL box upstairs that blew a sigh of relief. The lid had finally been placed on the 'spygate scandal.'
Oli McBurnie's dramatic stoppage-time strike saw Hull City earn promotion and on paper, should put an end to the drama that had engulfed the whole affair. But whether it truly was the last we will see of the story that had dominated the national sporting landscape in the last two weeks remains to be seen.
As Hull's Acun Ilicali, now the owner of a Premier League team, was on his travels around Wembley Way pre-match, taking pictures with fans and playing the personality that has seen him become a phenomenon as the 'Turkish Simon Cowell' and amass a whopping 13.2 million followers on Instagram, he stopped for a chat with BBC Radio Humberside.
"Our legal team says that we have to go for action, that's for sure," he said.
"So we have no doubt about it. Here, all we want is justice. If justice is broken, nobody will enjoy football."
The words that the EFL and possibly Southampton too had been dreading were here. Ilicali added that it was an "incredibly wrong decision" to put an eliminated team back into the playoffs and that his lawyers agreed. If Hull were unsuccessful in their promotion charge, he would be reaching into the coffers to initiate legal proceedings. So when McBurnie tapped home, not only did it end a nine-year Hull hiatus from the top-flight but it might just have also saved the Championship's governing body from a whole lot more trouble in the legal arena, through no fault of their own it must be added.
Despite Ilicali's qualms, there is no precedent in English football where he would be successful. On top of that the EFL simply cannot afford to lose the 'richest game in football' and everything that comes with it, including the upwards of £200 million on offer, on the Championship's big day out at Wembley, so the idea he suggested of the whole game being written off and Hull going straight up would've been a disastrous one for the executives. Thankfully for them, the scenario where Ilicali would consult his lawyers is now no longer on the table, but the wide-ranging impact of the dark tale of 'spygate' will rage on.
The leadup to this year's final had been unlike any other. It is now over two weeks since the start of the scandal when members of Middlesbrough's staff said that they had seen a figure recording their training session two days before the sides faced off in the first leg of their playoff semifinal. The club lodged a complaint with the EFL, then came the investigation and Southampton's own internal review but all roads were leading to one outcome. The case was then heard by an independent disciplinary commission on Tuesday and on Wednesday the report emerged detailing that the Saints had admitted guilt and were to be kicked out of the playoff final as well as docked four points at the start of next season, while Boro were back in.
The commission who heard the case on Thursday after a Southampton appeal said that the club had a "contrived and determined plan" to spy on opponents with it also emerging that they had spied on Oxford United and Ipswich earlier in the season. Maybe more notably though, the report also detailed "deplorable" treatment of junior members of staff who were pressured to comply. Very, very grim reading for Saints boss Tonda Eckert whose future on the south coast is now very much in the balance.
It all meant Boro were reinstated and Hull, only four days before the biggest day in the club's season, were told of a new opponent after spending the best part of a week preparing to play Southampton. It really was an unprecedented build up and it is unlikely that we see anything like it ever again.
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- Spygate explainer: Why Southampton were booted from playoffs
The result of the scandal that had engulfed not only these playoffs but the sporting landscape of the country is that both sides made the long trip down to Wembley on Saturday after a heavily tainted period of preparation. Boro boss Kim Hellberg said it had been "difficult" for his side to train with intensity amid the uncertainty and he even took a trip back to his native Sweden for a few days to get away from it all. On the other side Hull manager Sergej Jakirović spoke of a similar disruption, calling his side "collateral damage" in the whole ordeal. It was nigh on impossible for either set of players, more so Boro after their season was so dramatically over before it wasn't, to be mentally ready for the game with the biggest prize in football after a week where all the talk was centered away from the game and contested on the pitch of back-and-forth statements and rulings.
And that sentiment was on show on Saturday as the game struggled to even get into first gear let alone get out of it, albeit with the scorching London temperatures playing a part in that. McBurnie's stoppage-time winner was all too timely and meant that one set of fans would leave on the right side of some customary playoff drama, drama that for a long while looked as if it would never come.
"It was the toughest two weeks I've been through with emotions and back and forth and handling those things," Kim Hellberg said.
"So it's been tough. It's been draining emotionally, but there's no excuse. Hull scored a goal today and again, you have to congratulate them and we were ready to play the game."
"It's been a very, very weird situation. And again, there's no excuse in that. It's just been very, very tough [going] back and forth."
Boro boss Hellberg had to hold back tears in his news conferences when the scandal first emerged and was very emotive in the language he used, he has since had time to process it but even after the final defeat at Wembley he looked a man shaken and he had seen Boro play like a team not entirely in the right headspace. To even be suggesting that for a side in a playoff final is an astonishing look for the EFL and in turn English football and the FA, who announced that they would be launching their own investigation into Southampton's actions. In the end, Boro suffered the ignominy of being knocked out of the same set of playoffs twice, a painful first.
One of the effects of Eckert and Co.'s actions on the playoff final itself is over 30,000 Saints' fans being forced to accept refunds for their tickets. If they had accommodation and travel booked in England's most expensive city? No reimbursements were available there of course. How much of an impact it had on the drab nature of the game itself can be argued. Most big finals play out in a similar way but the toll of it all hung heavy over the Wembley arch.
All the talk of 'spygate' may yet overshadow the sheer level of the achievement for Hull. But after the owner took a punt on Jakirović last summer after he impressed in the Turkish Super Lig with Kayserispor, there was little expectation. The Tigers had just about stayed in the league the year before, were under a transfer embargo for late payments to other clubs and promotion was not on the agenda. But through McBurnie's brilliance, Joe Gelhardt's goals and Ryan Giles' creativity from defence to name a few of the unlikely promotion heroes, Hull have become the first team to go up after finishing sixth in the league since Blackpool in the 2009-10 campaign. The all-important goal on Saturday also took McBurnie to 25 goals for Hull this season, the most since a certain Jarrod Bowen got 26 seven years ago.
On xG (expected goals) Hull should be playing in League One next season and they also sit 23rd, just above Sheffield Wednesday, for missed chances faced where the opposition had at least 50% chance of scoring. And with just two wins in 11 before scraping back into the playoffs on the final day, sometimes the numbers do lie.
"He's [ Ilıcalı] very, very happy and since our first meeting we had this click, chemistry is good. He supported me," Jakirović said. "He believes in me and this is very good for my confidence also and for my staff because you can [say] 'easy, of course you must deliver a result there', but when you have this kind of support, then you can deliver a very good result."
After complaining of the impact of the scandal midweek, Jakirović was in better spirits when he spoke after the final. Premier League promotion can obviously have that effect. He joked that if Southampton had sent a 'spy' in his country, it would all end in laughter.
"I don't understand this [sending a spy]. I start to laugh and then I see, because in my country it'll be 'ha ha ha', nothing will happen, but here I see that it's too serious," he said with a playoff final winners' medal draped on his neck..
"And then Tuesday we had tactical training for Southampton and then in the evening, change completely everything, but we prepare our team no matter who will be our opponent."
They may laugh in Croatia but not in England. The 'spygate' scandal has shook English football to its core and even after Boro were reinstated to the playoff final, the occasion couldn't escape it.
There will surely be more details to come out, more investigations, internal reviews, staff changes and sanctions, but for now, away from Southampton's errors, Hull are Premier League. And they have ambitions of staying there.