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Suppose team A is playing team B. The referee blows his whistle to signal the end of the game (team B wins). Ten seconds after that, a player on team B says:

1. Team A played well, but they lost because we have better players and better tactics.

2. Team A has played well, but they've lost because we have better players and better tactics.

I think version #1 is correct in this case because the game is over, and the situation is no longer ongoing. Which version would you use? Thank you.

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    We have a ton of answers on here about present perfect and simple past. Once more I will say: It depends on what you want to say, not grammar. You cannot add last week, yesterday etc. to 2).
    – Lambie
    Commented May 18 at 16:35
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    It's hard to imagine a context where even a native Anglophone would come out with #2. As a non-native speaker, all you need to know is Don't use the Perfect verb form if you don't need it. And you hardly ever will need it, so if you're unsure, just assume you don't. You'll rarely be wrong.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented May 18 at 17:15
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    @FumbleFingers, really? “You hardly ever will need [the present perfect]”? What tense would you recommend to a speaker who’s about to answer the question, “I’ve only just arrived—traffic was horrible. How’s the game going?” Surely not, “Team A played well.”
    – Paul Tanenbaum
    Commented May 18 at 17:42
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    Okay, @FumbleFingers, but for my money, your advising learners not to bother about the perfect—until their proficiency exceeds some threshold?—does them a disservice. For instance, the contexts in which I have given is correct (and I gave is wrong) aren’t particularly rare. And I know l would be sore at any French teacher who advised that je donnais suffices, so I should put off bothering with j’ai donné until I had achieved greater mastery. I grant that the analogy is imperfect (imparfait?) since English verbs don’t work exactly the same as French verbs. But I think you get my point.
    – Paul Tanenbaum
    Commented May 18 at 18:01
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    Well, @FumbleFingers, I’ll be the first to admit to occasionally getting the impression that a more accurate name for this SE community than English Language Learners would be English Perfect (and Particularly Past Perfect) Learners.
    – Paul Tanenbaum
    Commented May 18 at 18:16

1 Answer 1

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WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SAY?

Do you want to specify OR not?

Here the game is definitely over.

  1. Team A played well, but they lost because we have better players and better tactics.

Here, the past is signaled, that's all.
2. Team A has played well [implying, for example, this season], but they've lost [unspecified] because we have better players and better tactics.

COMPARE:

Team A played well [last week], but they lost [the last game] because we have better players and better tactics.

  • I've worked there but am not working there now.

The present perfect is used to make a statement in the present about the past without qualifying when in the past something occurred.

  • We've brushed the cat [unspecified past] a lot but not recently. COMPARE
  • We brushed the cat a lot last month. [specified past, last month]
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