Hull City Overcomes Millwall in Playoff Clash with Belloumi's Brilliance

The numbers never lie, but they can sting. Millwall walked into this playoff home leg with momentum, noise and a six-game unbeaten run. They walked out having preserved a far less welcome tradition: the Lions still have a 100% losing record in Championship playoff home legs.

Hull, hardened by old memories of 2008 and 2016, arrived at The Den with a clear idea of how these nights are won. For the first 15 minutes, they played like a side determined to drag the tie away from Millwall before the home crowd could settle.

A flurry of early corners pinned the hosts back. One of them almost paid off. Charlie Hughes rose at the far post and guided a header towards the far-left corner, the ball skidding agonisingly wide. Millwall froze, then exhaled. With only champions Coventry scoring more away goals in the opening quarter-hour of league games than Hull’s seven this season, the home side were already living dangerously.

That scare jolted Millwall into life. The Lions finally bit back.

Femi Azeez carved out their first real threat just two minutes after Hughes’ miss, driving in from a tight angle and testing Hull’s resolve. From there, the tone of the half shifted. Millwall began to snap into tackles, win second balls, and force the Tigers to retreat.

Thierno Ballo embodied that edge. His crunching challenge on Kyle Joseph ended the Hull man’s night with an ankle injury, and almost turned the contest on its head. When Millwall worked the ball wide, a cross from the right flashed across the six-yard box, Ballo stretching but just failing to apply the final touch. The Den roared at the chance lost, but the momentum was theirs.

By the interval, Millwall had wrestled control of the match. What they didn’t have was a goal – and that familiar, nagging statistic hovered over them. Twenty of their 25 home league goals conceded this season had come after half-time. The danger was obvious. So was the pattern.

It nearly repeated itself on 48 minutes.

Hull sliced through with the kind of move that wins playoff ties. Sharp passing, clever movement, and suddenly Regan Slater was threading a pass into Oli McBurnie at the near post. The striker pulled the trigger, only for Tristan Crama to throw himself in the way and block. It was a huge intervention, and for a while it looked like the moment that might tilt the night Millwall’s way.

The game sagged after that. Neither side found a clear route to goal before the hour, and Alex Neil decided he had seen enough. Chasing only a second win in seven personal meetings with Hull, the Millwall boss went to his bench. Among the changes, Alfie Doughty stepped into the fray.

Neil barely had time to take his seat before the decision turned on him.

Doughty, still cold, was exposed almost immediately as Hull struck with ruthless clarity. Matt Crooks, head up and unhurried, drilled a searing diagonal ball out to Mohamed Belloumi on the right. The Algerian took charge of the moment.

He drove infield, shifting onto his left, and curled a superb strike into the far corner, beyond Doughty’s reach and past Anthony Patterson – the same goalkeeper who had tasted playoff glory with Sunderland just last year. One touch, one swing, one brutal reminder of what these nights demand.

The goal rattled Millwall. It could have unravelled them.

Barry Bannan, a man with playoff medals from 2010 and 2023 with Blackpool and Sheffield Wednesday, suddenly looked mortal. He surrendered possession cheaply in no-man’s land, gifting Belloumi another opening. Hull broke at speed, Belloumi feeding Liam Millar in acres of space. Millar shaped to kill the tie, only for Jake Cooper to hurl himself in front of the shot and deflect it over the bar. The defender’s timing was immaculate; his relief, brief.

Because Hull were not done.

With 12 minutes left, Cooper’s earlier heroics faded into the background as another substitute seized the stage. If Doughty’s introduction had been a problem for Millwall, Joe Gelhardt’s arrival for Hull was the opposite: decisive, clinical, devastating.

Again, Belloumi was the architect on the right. Again, he showed a touch of class. Collecting the ball wide, he shaped his body and whipped an outrageous, outside-of-the-boot pass square into the box. It split Millwall’s defence and rolled perfectly into Gelhardt’s path.

Gelhardt didn’t snatch at it. He picked his spot, drilling low into the bottom-right corner. Patterson got a hand to it, but not enough. The ball nestled in the net, and with it, Millwall’s season effectively ended.

From there, there was no late surge, no grandstand finish, no miracle comeback. Just the creeping realisation around The Den that the “best of the rest” tag from the regular season would bring no promotion parade. Premier League football, absent since their relegation in 1990, will have to wait at least another year.

Hull, by contrast, walked off with their perfect playoff record intact. They have still never tasted Championship playoff elimination. A year on from scrambling to survive on the final day, they now stand one win from the top flight, armed with belief and a forward line that knows how to punish hesitation.

Wembley awaits on 23 May. Ninety minutes, maybe a little more, between Hull City and the Promised Land. On this evidence, with Mohamed Belloumi – deservedly named Flashscore Man of the Match – at the heart of their most dangerous moments, they will not arrive in London short of conviction.