Referencing and Bibliographies in an SOP?

[Platysaurus]

I've seen a number of different styles, guides and examples for SOPs but nowhere can I get a straight answer on this - what do you do with references? I'm not citing heavily, just a little in one paragraph to show I know the background research and that I'm not going in blind, but does this mean putting a bibliography at the end?

I'd prefer to footnote, that would make it much neater, but my discipline (anthropology) always does in-text that so it looks like I don't know the referencing style. At the same time, in-text references with just the author name and year are very non-descript and don't show enough (I'm trying to cite some stuff in other languages as well to show that I read outside the English-speaking academy). And I've seen some exemplars with in-text referencing and without a reference list at the end but I'm not sure if that's how they were submitted or if the universities just chose to upload them like that.

Any thoughts?