The Professional Footballers ‘ Association has called for a full investigation after the death of former Arsenal youth player Billy Vigar and says players should “not be put at unnecessary and avoidable risk”.
Striker Vigar, 21, died on Thursday after sustaining a “significant brain injury” while playing for Chichester City at Wingate and Finchley FC last Saturday.
It is thought the injury was caused when he collided with a concrete wall, but the club have not confirmed this.
A petition calling for a ban on brick walls around football pitches has received more than 4, 000 signatures.
Speaking at a news conference on Friday, Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta said: “Hopefully they can understand how it happened, and why it happened, and obviously try to avoid this kind of thing”.
PFA chief executive Maheta Molango said in a statement it was vital to ensure “opportunities to make grounds safer for players have not been missed”.
The government and the PFA wrote to the Football Association, the Premier League, the English Football League and the National League in June 2023 calling on them to adopt a more proactive approach to player safety in this area.
That came after Bath City’s Alex Fletcher suffered a fractured skull after colliding with a concrete advertising hoarding during a match in November 2022.
“Clearly there needs to be a formal investigation into the incident and it is right that this is allowed to take place so that the full circumstances can be properly established”, said Molango.
“All of our thoughts right now are with Billy’s family and friends, and providing whatever support we can to them”, he said.
“All footballers should expect to be safe when they go out to play or train and to not be put at unnecessary and avoidable risk by factors beyond their control.
” Whilst it is important that a proper investigation is allowed to conclude, we have to ensure that opportunities to make grounds safer for players have not been missed and that players don’t feel that serious incidents involving their safety are necessary to prompt change. “
BBC Sport has contacted the FA for comment.
Vigar was a graduate of the Arsenal academy, leaving the club in 2024, and also had spells at Derby County, Eastbourne Borough and Hastings United.
” It is shocking news, “Arteta said.
” Straight away you’re thinking about the family, and how difficult it is to go through something like this in a very unexpected way.
“Hopefully they can understand how it happened, and why it happened, and obviously try to avoid this kind of thing.
We initially chose to achieve our independence as Mozambicans through diplomatic means. However, the coloniser, regrettably, chose not to follow the diplomatic route.
Microsoft has announced that it has withdrawn some of its services from the Israeli army, following an investigation that raised concerns that Israel may be violating the company’s terms of service by using its artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud services to spy on millions of Palestinians throughout Gaza and the West Bank.
The decision on Thursday followed a joint investigation by the United Kingdom’s Guardian newspaper and Israeli publications +972 Magazine and Local Call, which revealed in August that the Israeli army was using Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform to conduct mass surveillance of Palestinians amid Israel’s brutal onslaught on Gaza, which has killed more than 65,000 people in less than two years.
Recommended Stories
list of 4 itemsend of list
Microsoft has, in recent months, fired or reported several employees to the police over protests about the use of its software by the Israeli army in Gaza. In August, four employees were fired. Several others have quit the company in protest over Microsoft’s ties to the Israeli army, which they said were enabling the devastation in Gaza.
The tech company consistently denied those claims, but, following the investigation, it announced it had commissioned an external review of its communications on Israel by Washington, DC law firm, Covington & Burling LLP, and another, unnamed technical consulting firm.
Here’s what we know:
What has Microsoft announced about its AI services in Israel?
In a blog post directed to employees on Thursday, Microsoft’s vice chairman and president, Brad Smith, revealed that an external review of the company’s communication records and financial statements had prompted Thursday’s decision, as elements supporting its findings were found to be true. Smith did not detail the specific evidence, but stated that it related to the Israeli army’s use of Azure and Microsoft’s AI services.
“We therefore have informed IMOD of Microsoft’s decision to cease and disable specified IMOD subscriptions and their services, including their use of specific cloud storage and AI services and technologies,” Smith wrote, referring to the Israeli Ministry of Defense.
“We have reviewed this decision with IMOD and the steps we are taking to ensure compliance with our terms of service, focused on ensuring our services are not used for mass surveillance of civilians,” he added.
This marks a major shift in Microsoft’s stance on this issue. In May, following similar findings reported by The Associated Press news agency that the Israeli army’s spy agency, Unit 8200, was using Microsoft services for mass surveillance in Gaza, the company said it had conducted internal reviews of its records.
While it acknowledged that advanced AI and cloud computing services had been sold to the Israeli military to aid in its efforts to locate and rescue Israelis captured by Hamas on October 7, Microsoft said it found no evidence its services were being used to target or harm people in Gaza.
In his statement on Thursday, Smith said the review of its services to the Israeli military was ongoing, but that the decision to restrict some services had been made because Microsoft’s terms of service “prohibit the use of our technology for mass surveillance of civilians”.
Why has Microsoft changed its stance on this issue now?
Simply, the company says it did not know what the Israeli military was using its services for.
Smith said the August news report had revealed information that Microsoft itself had not been privy to because of customer privacy regulations.
The company has reiterated several times that it had no way of knowing how the Israeli army was deploying Microsoft technology due to these privacy policies.
A Palestinian reacts as he inspects the site of Israeli strikes on houses at the Shati refugee camp, amid an Israeli military operation, in Gaza City, September 26, 2025 [Ebrahim Hajjaj/Reuters]
Which AI or Surveillance technologies have been withdrawn?
Smith said only specific Microsoft service subscriptions had been blocked from the Israeli military, and that Israel would still be able to use other Microsoft products for the country’s own cybersecurity.
He did not specify which particular products were disabled, or if specific units in the Israeli military had been barred from using them.
However, he did mention that there were issues relating to how the Israeli army uses its Azure storage servers based in the Netherlands, as well as Microsoft’s AI services.
What is Microsoft’s Azure, and how has it been used in Gaza?
Microsoft’s Azure platform provides a host of cloud-based services, including near-limitless digital storage and powerful AI capabilities that, among many things, allow for compiling, transcribing, translating and analysing vast numbers of phone calls.
The Azure platform was the main subject of the August news investigation, which revealed that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella met with Yossi Sariel, the then-head of Israel’s military spy agency, Unit 8200, in late 2021 at the company’s headquarters in Seattle to discuss collaborating on the storage of large volumes of ‘”sensitive” Israeli intelligence, using Azure.
Unit 8200 is the Israeli military’s elite cyberwarfare unit responsible for clandestine operations, including collecting signal intelligence and surveillance. Sariel has driven the unit’s use of AI, and was awarded by the Israeli military in 2018 for his work on an “artificial intelligence and anti-terrorism” project.
After the Seattle meeting, Unit 8200 built a mass surveillance tool that it has used to sweep, record and store millions of phone calls made by Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank since 2022, according to the authors of the investigative report. Sariel resigned in September 2024 over the unit’s failure to predict the October 7 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel.
While Israel has long intercepted calls in the occupied Palestinian territory, the new AI-powered system bolstered that tactic immensely, allowing intelligence officers to capture and store millions of phone calls and texts and for a much longer period, the news investigation revealed.
The AP, earlier in February, also reported that the Israeli military’s use of Microsoft products surged after October 7. The Israeli military used gigabytes of cloud storage and huge amounts of AI-enabled language translation services for mass surveillance, cross-checked with in-house AI systems to decide on who should be targeted in air attacks, the AP reported.
Did Microsoft really not know what Azure was being used for?
Although Microsoft’s position is that it had no knowledge of how Israel was using Azure, leaked Microsoft documents and interviews with 11 Microsoft sources showed that Unit 8200 was storing Palestinian communications on the platform, the joint expose noted.
Sources from Unit 8200 also told the reporters that those capabilities have helped the Israeli army to target people in deadly air attacks on Gaza and in its military operations in the West Bank. The Israeli military tracked “everyone, all the time”, one Unit 8200 source was quoted as saying in the investigation.
“The whole arrangement from the beginning, from 2021 … was between the head of 8200, a unit that is known for doing surveillance on Palestinians, and the very top officials of Microsoft,” journalist Meron Rapoport, who was involved in the investigation, told Al Jazeera on Friday.
Demonstrators march in support of Palestinians in Gaza near the Microsoft Build conference, during the ongoing Israeli war on Gaza, to call for the termination of Microsoft’s Azure contracts with Israel, in Seattle, Washington, US, on May 21, 2024 [File: David Ryder/Reuters]
How significant is Microsoft’s decision to withdraw its services?
Tech analysts are sceptical about how much Microsoft’s decision will affect Israel’s surveillance operation in Gaza and the West Bank. It is unclear how Microsoft will ensure that the Israeli army, as a whole, no longer has access to Azure, its AI services or other Microsoft products that could be used to continue mass surveillance and conduct deadly attacks or other operations.
Hossam Nasr, one of the more than a dozen Microsoft employees who were fired or arrested for protesting the company’s involvement in the Gaza war, told AP on Thursday that the recent move was an “unprecedented win”, but ultimately not enough.
“Microsoft has only disabled a small subset of services for only one unit in the Israeli military,” said Nasr, an organiser with the group No Azure for Apartheid, which includes other former Microsoft employees. “The vast majority of Microsoft’s contract with the Israeli military remains intact.”
How have Israeli and US officials responded?
Responding to Microsoft’s move, an unnamed Israeli official was quoted by AP as saying the decision would do “no damage to the operational capabilities” of the Israeli army.
How has Israel surveilled Palestinians in the past?
Al Jazeera has documented the adverse physical and mental impacts of constant Israeli surveillance on Palestinians, including the use of CCTV and a facial recognition system called Red Wolf that is deployed in parts of the occupied West Bank.
The programme is used at military checkpoints in Hebron and occupied East Jerusalem, where Israeli settlers have moved to scan the faces of Palestinians and add them to a database, without their consent. The system aids the Israeli military in its discriminatory policies of banning Palestinians from using certain road networks that are only open to settlers.
Similar tactics have been deployed by the Chinese government to surveil Uighur Muslims, rights defenders noted.
Palestinians have long claimed that Israel, which produces and sells spyware to several countries, uses them to test its products. Israeli cybersecurity company NSO Group came in for widespread criticism in 2021 over its flagship software Pegasus, which clients were using to target opposition political members, activists and journalists – including some working for Al Jazeera, according to a media investigation.
Clients of the spyware were not revealed, but they included governments and were reportedly clustered in Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Hungary, India, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
In May 2023, Amnesty International concluded that Israel was increasing its surveillance in Hebron and East Jerusalem, and was using Red Wolf to “entrench” its system of apartheid.
“This surveillance is part of a deliberate attempt by Israeli authorities to create a hostile and coercive environment for Palestinians, with the aim of minimising their presence in strategic areas,” the rights organisation said.
A member of the Irish rap group Kneecap has been cleared of a terror-related charge by a court in London.
Due to a technical error in the way the charge against the Belfast-based rapper was brought, chief magistrate Paul Goldspring said on Friday that the case against Liam Og O hAnnaidh should be dropped. Critics have cited the case as an example of a clampdown on free speech, which has since become extremely heated.
Recommended Stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
O hAnnaidh, 27, who was initially accused under the Anglicized name Liam O’Hanna and who performs under the stage name Mo Chara, was charged after the six-month suspension for the charge, which the magistrates’ court can only handle.
The judge remarked, “The charge is unlawful and null, and this court has no authority to hear it.”
O hAnnaidh was detained in May for holding a Hezbollah flag at a concert in London in November 2024.
It has been illegal to support the group since the United Kingdom declared Hezbollah a “terrorist” in 2019 in the United Kingdom.
O hAnnaidh claimed that the group’s performance was a result of the fact that the flag was thrown on the stage. The band has referred to the legal process as “witchhunt.”
On June 28, 2025, Revellers in Pilton, Somerset, United Kingdom, gather to perform at the Glastonbury Festival (File: Reuters).
O hAnnaidh applauded the court’s decision following the ruling. He claimed that it demonstrated the band’s failure to tarnish Palestinian support.
In front of a crowd of supporters gathering outside the court, he said, “We’re right and you’re wrong, so it was always about Gaza, about what happens if you dare to speak up.”
We will work with the Crown Prosecution Service to understand the potential effects of this ruling on us and how that might affect the way these cases are handled in the future, according to a Metropolitan Police spokesperson.
Michelle O’Neill, the first minister of Northern Ireland, welcomed the decision. She wrote on social media that “these accusations were part of a deliberate attempt to silence those who speak out against the Israeli genocide in Gaza.”
In response to statements made in support of Palestinians during Israel’s conflict in Gaza, Kneecap has been accused of glorifying terrorism by various nations.
The group has been barred from entering by Hungary and Canada, and some of their concerts have been canceled by Germany and Austria.
Kneecap has accused critics of trying to silence the band because of its support for the Palestinian cause throughout Israel’s ongoing conflict in Gaza, which has resulted in the deaths of more than 65 000 people and destroyed much of the area since it started in October 2023.
Watch the moment Europe’s Jon Rahm is booed approaching the first tee to kick of his foursome match with Tyrrell Hatton against Bryson DeChambeau and Justin Thomas at the 2025 Ryder Cup.
Follow day one of the 2025 Ryder Cup live on BBC Sport
The death of Chichester City FC player Billy Vigar has “completely sent the club in a spin”, say fans.
Former Arsenal academy striker Vigar sustained a “significant brain injury” during an away match at Wingate and Finchley FC last Saturday.
It is thought the injury was caused when he collided with a concrete wall, but the club has not confirmed this. The 21-year-old died on Thursday after several days in an induced coma.
Getty Images
Floral and card tributes to the Worthing-born footballer have been left at Chichester City’s ground.
A petition calling for a ban on brick walls around football pitches has received more than 4, 000 signatures.
Launched by Jack Mison, it states: “Billy’s passing is not an isolated incident—countless players at all levels have suffered serious injuries, including broken bones, concussions, and life-altering trauma, as a result of these dangerous barriers.
George Carden/BBC
Michael Stemp, from Bognor Regis, says he supports the recently-launched petition.
” I think that’s very sensible, I think this is long overdue… a few years ago there was a player at Bath]Alex Fletcher] who was badly injured, “he said.
Luke Griggs, chief executive of brain injury charity Headway UK, said this” tragedy has to be the catalyst for further discussions “about how to mitigate the risk of such head injuries.
He said:” This is the second such incident in the last few years, with Alex Fletcher of Bath City experiencing career ending injuries through a similar incident…
“Lower league football or rugby clubs with small, traditional grounds cannot be expected to rebuild their stadiums overnight, but there must be more accessible, affordable ways to mitigate the risk of this kind of injury”.
George Carden/BBC
Mr Wilson, who did not attend the game, added: “In a way I’m almost glad I wasn’t there… I can’t imagine what the players must be going through”.
Mr Stemp says he feels “very cut up” by Vigar’s death.
“It’s so sad for a youngster of only 21”, he added.
Wingate and Finchley, which has postponed its match against Canvey Island FC on Saturday, said everyone at the club is “deeply saddened” by the 21-year-old’s death.
“Our sincere condolences go out to Billy’s family, and to our friends at Chichester City FC at this incredibly difficult time”, the club posted on X.
Chichester City, whose match against Lewes on Saturday has also been postponed, posted: “Rest in peace Billy. Forever in the hearts of all at Chichester City Football Club”.
