What is laser? How it helped Senegal to defeat Egypt in World Cup playoff

What are laser pointers and are they harmful?

On Tuesday, Senegal defeated Egypt on penalty shootout to book a place in the 2022 World Cup finals in Qatar.
This victory was, however, attributed to the use of laser pointers on Egyptian players.

The Pharaohs have called for a replay of the controversial match.
The development has triggered this question among internet users, thus: What are laser pointers?

According to Indian Times, “They are small hand-held devices that emit sharp and narrow laser beams of visible light. According to the website laserpointersafety.com, they can harm the eyes when projected from close range, typically within a few metres. But when shone from the stands on a player on the field, the light “would not be steady enough to allow dangerous heat to build up in the eye”. This, it says, “goes for both visible green light, and any non-visible infrared light”.

However, even when the laser is beamed from a distance, the brightness can cause irritation, laserpointersafety.com says. “The worst effect would be glare or brief flash-blindness, like when a camera flash goes off close to a person’s face,” it says.

In fact, people have been arrested for projecting laser beams at pilots while riding a plane or a helicopter.

Can they act as a distraction, even from a distance?

Yes. According to the author of the ‘Laser Bible’, Samuel Goldwasser, the legal limit of the green laser pointer is 5 milliwatts – or 5,000th of a watt. While the limit varies from country to country, there have been instances in the past, according to Input, where the pointers have been up to “200 times above the legal limit” for green lasers. “When it’s in a concentrated beam it can be very, very bright,” Goldwasser was quoted as saying by the magazine.

Have there been instances like these in the past?

The scale at which the laser lights were beamed on Tuesday during the Senegal-Egypt game has rarely been seen before. But it’s uncommon for fans to use it as a distraction tool for their opponents. Most recently, UEFA had fined England’s Football Association 30,000 euros after their supporters aimed laser pointers at Denmark goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel while trying to save a penalty during the Euro 2020 last year.

 

The trend is common in various football leagues, including the Champions League, where Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo have been targeted on numerous occasions.

How have teams reacted to the incident?

While no team directly commented on this issue, the Egyptian football association said their players, particularly Salah, were subjected to racist abuse and attacks.

“The Egypt national team have been exposed to racism with offensive signs in the stands against the Egyptian players in general, and Mohamed Salah in particular,” the Egyptian FA said in a statement.

“The crowd also intimidated the players by throwing bottles and rocks at them during the warm-up. The Egyptian group’s buses have also been exposed to assaults that led to broken windows and injuries; filed with pictures and videos as proof in the complaint submitted.”