Concacaf made interesting appointments in the last matchday of the Gold Cup group stage, in which the Guatemalan brothers Walter and Bryan Lopez were given decisive matches. The Lopez brothers were appointed to the final games of Group C (Panama – El Salvador and Costa Rica – Martinique), played at the same time, where three teams were seeking the second spot available, taking into account that Panama already had its ticket to the quarter-finals.
Walter, Bryan, and Gerson Lopez are children of former referee Miguel Lopez. Walter remembers that, before being a referee, at the age of 15, his father sent him to watch games to evaluate the performances of the referees: "You will write down everything that you look at and then you will tell them what they were wrong about, so I spent several months just going to see the referees”.
Then they alternated being referee and assistant. “I had the great happiness of having my father as a referee, assistant and trainer”, he adds. Furthermore, the teachings continued. "We met once a month to share the match experiences and the tournaments”, he says. Gerson adds one more clue: "My dad has always told us to enjoy officiating, because if we do, we're going to achieve great things." And not because it is the last one, it is the least important, because it is surely the most decisive. “We always say that refereeing must be honest, and matches must be refereed with great loyalty,” revealed Miguel. (Source: LuchoSolares)
Walter Lopez participated as fourth official in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil and later that year refereed the 2014 Club World Cup final. While enjoying international recognition, Walter Lopez’s career suffered its first blow at the 2015 Concacaf Gold Cup. He awarded a controversial 121st minute penalty on Costa Rica’s Roy Miller in the 1-0 quarter-final loss to Mexico, but then admitted that there was no foul, saying that his assistant made a mistake in calling it. The Guatemalan referee told his home country’s newspaper Prensa Libre that he saw no penalty in real time and made the call because assistant referee Eric Boria, from the USA, yelled that it was a penalty. “If he wouldn’t have told me to call it, I wouldn’t have penalized anyone”, Lopez told the newspaper. “We are a working team and I trust all my assistants. He is a good assistant but was wrong like any other human can be” (Source: TicoTimes). Consequently, AR Boria lost his FIFA badge, but Walter Lopez received a second chance. In 2016, Walter and his brother Gerson were appointed together to the Olympic Games in Rio, as referee and assistant referee, respectively, followed by the 2017 Gold Cup final. Then, totally unexpected, another huge AR mistake would ruin Walter’s advancing career. On 12 October 2017, he awarded a "ghost goal” in favour of Panama in the qualifier Panama – Costa Rica for the 2018 World Cup. Walter Lopez spoke some time after that incident that practically cut off his aspirations to attend the 2018 World Cup and marked his career. "When we arrived at the hotel, we watched the video and found out that unfortunately a big mistake had been made, the ball had never crossed the goal line... I felt frustration, anger, sadness. It was our last qualifying match, and you want to do your job well, we know that mistakes at that stage can cost dearly, and it was a fundamental part of why I was not on the list (of referees) for the World Cup", said Walter Lopez. The consequences were huge: Panama qualified for the World Cup in Russia, Honduras going to the play-offs when without that phantom goal they could go straight to the World Cup and the USA would have gone to the play-offs if Panama had not won. Referee Walter Lopez lost his expected selection for the 2018 World Cup, while the assistant referee who indicated the “ghost goal”, Marco Diaz, lost his FIFA badge (Source: Diez).
Although not directly involved in the “ghost goal”, Walter’s brother, AR1 Gerson Lopez, decided to retire after that match and moved to the USA. After Gerson’s unexpected retirement in 2017, their younger brother, Bryan, entered the international scene, as a referee, by joining his older brother, Walter, on the FIFA List. In 2023, Bryan (35) attended the FIFA U-20 World Cup in Argentina, while Walter (42) was given a third chance by Concacaf who appointed him to the first leg of the Concacaf Champions League final. Finally, the two Lopez brothers were selected by Concacaf for the Gold Cup. Although Bryan was originally on the support list, he ended up on the field, as referee, on the same day as his older brother, both being appointed in the last day of the group stage. Walter refereed Panama again 5 years after the “ghost goal” that qualified them to the 2018 World Cup and severely damaged his career.
