At least where I come from, perfect tense is often used in place of imperfect (preterite) but not the other way around. So “We played football” could be translated as either “Wir spielten Fußball” or “Wir haben Fußball gespielt”, but for “we have played football” I would only ever use the latter, no matter the stylistic layer.

I hope that helps.

"Wir haben Fußball gespielt." (Perfekt) and "Wir spielten Fußball." (Präteritum) means the same thing, but the latter is not the exact translation of the sentence. See https://www.duolingo.com/comment/14935425/Difference-Between-Perfekt-and-Pr%C3%A4teritum for more information about the difference between Perfekt and Präteritum.