If you run through the names of the people who own English football clubs, Acun Ilicali is not the one that immediately comes to mind. The president of Hull City, promoted back to the Premier League ten years after their last appearance in the richest league in the world, has never belonged to football’s most recognisable circle. And yet, in recent days, the Turkish businessman has become one of the most talked-about figures of the transfer window. Because, put simply, he has changed the way the market is presented, making its movements visible to the media and to his own supporters in a way that is almost unheard of. His decisions have been shaped, as he has said himself, by frustration with the rumours circulated by journalists and the so-called “experts”. What remains is that something unusual has happened — something rarely seen at the highest levels of football.
The story starts with three signings: Hull City have already brought in goalkeeper Jack Butland from Rangers, midfielder Oscar Zambrano from Maribor and defender Matt Targett from Newcastle United. Around those moves, however, Ilicali published a rather sharp post on his X account. The president said he was “disturbed by claims that several players had rejected the chance to join Hull City, as well as by the fact that our club’s name has been used to attract everyone’s attention. We have worked intensely for two months, and to prevent false speculation I am writing to you with our current transfer situation.”
And he did exactly that. He published the list of players who had already arrived and those Hull City were still negotiating with:
Dear Hull City family,
We are reading dozens of false transfer rumors in many places. We are disturbed by the claims that we have been rejected and by the use of our club's name to gain attention. We have been working intensively for two months. I believe we will build a team… — Acun Ilıcalı (@acunilicali) July 23, 2026
As you will have noticed, the players are not identified by name, but “only” by the flags of their countries. Beside each one sits a percentage which, in some way, indicates the likelihood of the deal being completed. Many supporters immediately began trying to decode the list in the comments, matching nationalities with possible names. This too — perhaps above all this — is something new in the way the transfer market is told: presidents almost never reveal the operations they are pursuing, even if in this case Ilicali still kept the most important details to himself.
The episode fits naturally with the figure of Acun Ilicali, a man the Guardian once described as “the Turkish Simon Cowell”. Before football, there was television: he was a journalist and producer behind some of the most famous programmes in Turkey, and beyond Turkey. He was also vice-president of Fenerbahce, and he is now a club owner whose relationships with managers have often been complicated. So it is hardly surprising that he, the owner of Hull City since 2022, would be the one to push back against the usual language of the transfer market and, in practice, find a different way of speaking about it. It may work. It may not. It may never be copied by anyone else. But for now, it is something different. And in a world where almost every move is hidden until the moment it becomes official, that alone is enough to make it stand out.