The most thrilling moment in Hull City’s Championship play-off semi-final against Millwall came in the first minute. Mohamed Belloumi, the club’s 23-year-old Algerian winger, weaved in and out of the Millwall defence before hitting a shot which skimmed the post.
Son of Algerian football legend Lakhdar Belloumi, the man who played 147 games for his country and scored as Algeria defeated European champions West Germany in the 1982 World Cup finals, Mohamed is the most exciting Hull City player in a team who are one game away from returning to England’s Premier League.
They will play Middlesbrough at Wembley Stadium this Saturday after Southampton were kicked out for spying on Boro ahead of their semi-final. The game could cap the best week of Belloumi’s career so far after he was named in Algeria’s initial World Cup squad. He’s yet to play for the senior team who are grouped with world champions Argentina, Jordan and Austria in the summer's showpiece event.
Belloumi joined the Tigers from Portuguese team Farense in 2024. Before that he played for MC Oran in his native Algeria, having risen through the ranks of his hometown club GC Mascara.
By the time he moved to Hull, his release fee was €15 million, but the move didn’t go to plan. After scoring twice in a 4-1 home win against Cardiff City in September 2024 and winning the goal and player of the month, he suffered a cruciate injury a month later and missed the rest of the 2024/25 season. He had played only 10 games for his new club. This season was hardly any better.
A hamstring injury meant he missed most of the games until November, while a torn thigh muscle saw him miss every game between December 29 and March 7. His side did well without him, rising to fifth in the table. Yet Belloumi was an important player in the final months of the season, initially as a sub and then a starter, but still mindful of his minutes since he had suffered serious injuries.
He’s quiet and does almost no interviews. He communicates best in Arabic with one of Hull’s physios who is an English Iraqi. But teammates think that he understands a lot more English than he admits. He’s popular, cheeky.
The player known as ‘Mo’ to teammates usually plays as a right winger but can drift to the left. From the right, he dips his shoulder, does a reverse and shoots. Not a workhorse for the team, but rather a player who can – and does – produce the individual magic to win games rather than tracking back.
Belloumi’s audacious effort in the first leg against Millwall didn’t go in and the result was a 0-0 home draw. In the second leg, amid the febrile atmosphere of Millwall’s Den, Belloumi was introduced at half-time with the score at 0-0.
The Algerian was the catalyst, putting Hull City ahead after 64 minutes with a curling strike and then setting up Joe Gelhardt to make it 2-0, after Belloumi had won the ball back in his own half.
Millwall sank while unfancied Hull, under former Bosnian international Sergej Jakirovic, are on the cusp of Premier League football for the first time in a decade. Not bad for a team who only just avoided relegation to England’s third tier this time last year.
“Mo’s brilliant. He can be whatever he wants to be,” Hull striker Oli McBurnie said after the Millwall win. “He was probably unlucky not to start but the gaffer obviously knew what he was doing because they both [him and fellow substitute Gelhardt] came on and scored.”
“He’s incredible,” added Tigers skipper Lewie Coyle. “We are so lucky that we’ve got so many players that can come on and impact the game. We all know what that boy’s about. I’m so pleased for him. He’s had an incredibly tough injury but it says a lot about him and the recovery team that he’s come back as he has.”
Hull City’s biggest game in a decade awaits; heartbreak or glory in a game that’s worth over £100 million to the winners. But with the Algerian Belloumi, Hull City have a player capable of delivering on the big stage.
