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If I play football since I was eight years old and still I am playing football I should say I have been playing football since I was eight.

But if I started playing football when I was eight and then stopped it 2 years later(now I retire from playing football) I should say I was playing football since I was eight?

So am I correct?

Because I have learned that present perfect continuous is for events that are connected to now but past continuous is finished in the past. (example)

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If you started playing when you were eight and are still playing:

I have been playing football since I was eight.

If you started playing when you were eight but are no longer playing:

I played football since I was eight.

Although, more idiomatically, this would probably be rephrased as something like:

I played football from the age of eight.

We normally use the simple past for something that is over and done with.

Only if we are talking about a discrete event in the past, generally something that is described as being interrupted, would we use the past continuous:

I was playing football last weekend when I broke my leg.

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  • Can the Present Perfect be possible with "later" adjunct (and other adverbials of the kin)? "He had been let loose from prison, but two years later he HAS PERPETRATED a series of criminal violations and he has never been taken up ever since." Here I mean that since "two years later" after having been released from the quod he has been making violations of the law again. Thank you!
    – Eugene
    Apr 9 at 11:33

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