If you’ve been watching ESPN’s nightly World Cup wrap-up show, you have probably seen them — not beneath the swaying palm trees on the Rio de Janeiro beachfront set with the rest of the on-air talent, but squished together in an eight-by-five-foot room. Two scruffy, balding Britons, clutching a miniature banana as a make-believe microphone, riffing on the day’s games. Maybe you’ve even heard them describe the Brazilian star Neymar as “a Japanese manga character come to life,” or the Portuguese forward Cristiano Ronaldo as “a petulant show pony.”

The World Cup, in Brazil, has introduced millions of Americans to the vagaries of stoppage time, to the Shakira-inspired dance moves of the Colombian national team and to the oral fixations of the Uruguayan Luis Suárez. It has also introduced them to those Britons, Michael Davies and Roger Bennett — ESPN’s “Men in Blazers.”

Until recently, Mr. Bennett and Mr. Davies were best known — to the extent that they were known at all — for their weekly “Men in Blazers” podcast with a small but devoted following of American soccer geeks, known collectively as “GFOPs” (Great Friends of the Pod). But with soccer now dominating the American sports conversation, they are off the margins and in the mainstream, doing daily online video reports for ESPN and popping up on shows like “Morning Joe,” “Charlie Rose” and “CBS News Sunday Morning.”

Bennett and Davies are less sports analysts than cultural observers, looking for amusing ways to frame the most compelling story lines of the tournament. They have, for instance, taken a special interest in Mexico’s stout coach, Miguel Herrera, who is driven into such a state of hallucinatory ecstasy when his team scores that he’s been known to end up on the ground, locked in an embrace with one of his players.