\n<\/p>\n
The family of former Arsenal academy player Billy Vigar are attending Saturday\u2019s Premier League fixture against Everton at the Emirates Stadium as a guest of the club.<\/p>\n
Vigar died at the age of 21 after sustaining a significant brain injury during a seventh-tier match in September. The striker collided with a brick wall during Chichester City\u2019s game at Wingate & Finchley, leading to the Football Association (FA) announcing a review of the dangers posed by pitch-side boundaries in the lower divisions.<\/p>\n
Vigar joined Arsenal at the age of 14 and progressed through the academy to the under-21 side. His family are attending Saturday\u2019s match as guests of Arsenal academy manager Per Mertesacker.<\/p>\n
Vigar was scouted by Arsenal while playing for Hove Rivervale, an amateur side based in Hove, Sussex. He scored 17 goals during his debut season at the club, and was in the same academy intake as Omari Hutchinson, Brooke Norton-Cuffy and Charlie Patino.<\/p>\n
He signed a professional contract with Arsenal in July 2022. Speaking to The Athletic <\/em>in September, Luca Hodges-Ramon, who represented Vigar from the age of 16, explained how Mertesacker had communicated the qualities Vigar brought when offering him the deal.<\/p>\n \u201cBilly was really unfortunate during his scholarship years and missed a lot of football through injury, but he signed a two year deal because Arsenal saw potential in him,\u201d Hodges-Ramon said. \u201cPer Mertesacker called me to say that, despite the fact he hadn\u2019t played as much as they\u2019d have liked, the pro contract was because of what he brought to the group in terms of his attitude, his work ethic and the example he set, and also because he gave them something different.\u201d<\/p>\n Vigar departed Arsenal in July 2024 and spent the 2024-25 season with Hastings United before signing for Chichester in August.<\/p>\n Tributes to Vigar were paid from across the football pyramid following his death, with Arsenal describing him as \u201ca character beloved by teammates and coaches alike\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cAs well as his significant talent, Billy will always be remembered for his love of the game, pride at representing our football club \u2014 he once called the day he was spotted by our scouts as \u2018the most important of his life\u2019 \u2014 and a character beloved by teammates and coaches alike,\u201d a club statement from September read.<\/p>\n A full inquest into Vigar\u2019s death will take place this year. It is likely the coroner, Andrew Walker, will announce whether the authorities should have done more to eliminate the dangers regarding the presence of concrete perimeters around football pitches.<\/p>\n Following Vigar\u2019s death, the FA was accused of putting footballers\u2019 lives at risk after it emerged that a coroner had warned the governing body 10 years ago about the dangers of having a concrete wall beside a non-League pitch. This came after Ben Hiscox died at the age of 30 after colliding with the clubhouse wall during an amateur game at Stoke Gifford in April 2015.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The family of former Arsenal academy player Billy Vigar are attending Saturday\u2019s Premier League fixture against Everton at the Emirates Stadium as a guest of the club. Vigar died at … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":899,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}