Simon Clifford
Described by many as one of the most influential men in football, Simon Clifford founded the Brazilian Soccer Schools in 1996 and devised a syllabus based on Futebol de Salao, the small-sided game which uses a weighted, size two football and which has been cited by many past and present players - including Pele, Zico, Kaka and Robinho - as the secret to their success.
The organisation is now the world's largest of its kind, with over one million children attending sessions in nations including Australia, America, Nigeria and Singapore, and already the likes of John Bostock, Micah Richards and Aidan White have emerged from the programme.
Six years after he started BSS, Clifford introduced SOCATOTS, a developmental programme for children aged from six months to five years that uses football as its medium, and there are now over 300 centres delivering sessions that look to aid youngsters' motor, numeracy and literacy skills.
In 2005, Clifford joined Sir Clive Woodward at Southampton Football Club with the intention of forming a managerial partnership in the subsequent season, but due to frustrations with the existing set-up he left to focus on his ongoing commitments.
Middlesbrough-born Clifford is also the owner and manager of Unibond First Division North side Garforth Town, overseeing two promotions thus far as well as persuading the likes of former Brazil internationals Socrates, Careca and Cafu to come out of retirement for coaching and playing stints with the East Leeds club.
Sir Alex showed arrogance and contempt for the FA Cup
Many of these supporters will be working people who have spent an awful lot of money on tickets and travel for the semi-final clash against Everton and will have had to have gone straight back to work on Monday morning.
I watched this week with interest Sir Alex Ferguson's press conference where he accused Liverpool manager Rafa Benitez of arrogance and contempt in terms of some innocuous gestures made during Liverpool's 4-0 victory over Sam Allardyce's Blackburn, smiling while questioning the journalists present as to whether they had seen Benitez behaving so badly!
It brought me back to equally incongruous comments Ferguson made on Arsene Wenger a number of years ago where he called the Arsenal manager 'a novice who should confine his opinions on the game to Japanese football.'
He's never short of something to say with regards to those managers whose teams are challenging Manchester United at any particular time in any particular competition. Arrogance and contempt are very strong words to level at any individual and seem to be totally out of step when referring to a fixture where neither he nor Manchester United were actually involved.
But if we're talking about arrogance and contempt, I could not think of two better terms to describe the way that Sir Alex has treated the greatest cup competition in the world, along with Manchester United supporters, many of whom will be working people who have spent an awful lot of money on tickets and travel for the semi-final clash against Everton and will have had to have gone straight back to work on Monday morning.