"I played football when I was young" vs "I was playing football when I was young"

Question

What's the difference between these two sentences:

1- I played football when I was young
2- I was playing football when I was young

Answer 1

There isn't necessarily a difference—they could mean the same thing. But there could be a small difference in interpretation. Sentence #1 suggests that you briefly played football when you were young. It could have been a single instance of playing football when you were young.

The progressive verb "playing" in sentence #2 suggests you repeatedly played football as a child, and are probably still playing football in the present. It sounds like how a pro football player would tell their origin story: "I was already playing football when I was 5".