The latest edition of our Football & Me series, focusing on people of Asian heritage working within the game, features a top-flight women's referee and an elite level coach and mentor.
Both Yasmin Saeed and Irfan Kawri have been making an impression in the game over the last few years, with Yasmin not only working her way up to becoming a referee in the Barclays Women's Super League but also working with female referees in the Manchester area.
And Irfan has worked across a number of roles in the men's elite game at academy, senior and international level, which has seen become an FA coach developer and mentor.
Speaking about how her pathway into refereeing began, Yasmin explained: "My dad is from Pakistan originally, and he moved to England when he was three or four.
"I've been kicking a ball for as long as I can remember and my mum was actually a footballer so I don't think I had a choice.
"So when my mum was playing football, I'd be playing as well with a boys' team. I was the only girl in the team but they made me feel like one of them which was really nice and then I got scouted by Man United.
"Unfortunately, I ended up breaking my pelvis and was in hospital for quite a long time and that was actually when I met a referee there as his son was in the hospital too.
"It was a year or so later, I thought about taking it on and seeing what it was all about.
For Irfan, who has held roles working with the academy at Burnley FC and also as an assistant coach with the Zambian national team and England C in the past, he goes back to his childhood upbringing and his love of football for getting to where he is now.
"Growing up, my mum always said to me to make sure you have friends from all backgrounds, races and ethnicities," he said.
"I was fortunate enough to play football in the competitive leagues which were predominantly white, British people so my main friends became white, British people at school.
"That was brilliant because it enabled me to learn more about their culture and they got to learn more about me so it worked both ways.
"And that shaped me as a person and gave me the confidence to go into different environments and cultures, integrate and mix in with people of different backgrounds."
