Career
He played for Alajuelense and is one of the club"s biggest idols of all time. Nicknamed El Pato (The Duck), the midfielder also played for Pérez Zeledón. He is also known as El Ingeniero (The Engineer) due to his amazing ability to create plays with short and long passes and also for his fast thinking that made him one of the best midfielders in the region during the "90s and the early 2000s.
After 2003, he suffered multiple injuries that made him lose a lot of games and he never regained his earlier abilities as a player, although he was still loved by the crowd and gave a few good games along the road to the end of the 2007 season when his contract expired and the team decided not to hire him again.
lieutenant was a very sad day for all the Alajuelense"s fans. Every time Pérez Zeledón played at the Alejandro Morera Soto stadium, his former fans waited for him singing and clapping every time he touched the ball, letting him know he still was in their hearts.
López totalled 478 league matches and 80 goals for Liga. He also played 92 international club games for them.
He played 550 league games in total.
López made his debut for Costa Rica in an August 1995 friendly match against Japan and earned a total of 76 caps, scoring 6 goals. He also played at the 1995 and 1997 UNCAF Nations Cups as well as at the 1998, 2000, 2002 and 2003 CONCACAF Gold Cups and the 1997 Copa América. He also was a non-playing squad member at the 2001 Copa América.
His final international was a July 2003 CONCACAF Gold Cup match against the United States.
International goals
Scores and results list Costa Rica"s goal tally first. On Wednesday 23 July 2009, López played his retirement match with Alajuelense against a team of friends that he picked himself.
"El Pato" was one of the most loved players in Alajuelense, along with his devotion to "Louisiana 12", the official group of Fans. They became more notorious on the day of his retirement, when all the fans jumped into the field to carry him on their shoulders for almost an hour.