We’ll be doing our best not to complain about the ABC/ ESPN coverage of the matches. We understand that part of the challenge of broadcasting the World Cup is making the tournament accessible to an audience that isn’t terribly knowledgeable about footy. That’s fine. Explain formations, break down the tactics, give us details on the rules.

But “explaining the rules” is different than “giving hamfisted summaries of geopolitics.” By this I mean please don’t flash graphics like the one they showed yesterday to introduce the Cote D’Ivoire side. After flashing the Cote D’Ivoire’s capital and population in a sidebar graphic, they gave us a second screen that matter-of-factly juxtaposed “Largest Producer of Cocoa, Currently In Civil War.”

I don’t think they were trying to be funny.