The ombudsman reports that despite a lot of complaints from viewers, he thinks that the coverage of the World Cup is completely appropriate. And he thinks Marcelo Balboa and O'Brien couldn't do any better. He writes:

"We've tried to convey the passion the rest of the world has for this sport to our country, as well as educate our viewers by sharing our knowledge of the game," Scanlan said in a telephone interview. Scanlan has a staff of about 100 working in Germany and a significant number of additional staffers at ESPN's Bristol headquarters. He said "the logistics of covering games in Germany, as well as from FIFA's broadcast headquarters in Munich, have at times been difficult."

I'm not sure if anything could be more insulting to a viewer. This is like all this talk about accessibility in poetry. If anything, the viewer is at least as intelligent as the commentator. And if there is something he/she does not understand (e.g., offsides, yellow cards, red cards), he/she can probably get it during the game (or look it up on the Internet). It's not like football is that difficult to understand. The rules are even easier than baseball, American rules football, cricket or tennis.