To win the World Cup, you need to win your group

With the World Cup well and truly underway television pundits are already consulting their football abacuses to calculate how various teams can escape the hectic group stage. While some more statistically-minded types (including our very own Gianluca Baio and Marta Blangiardo) have produced some rather more sophisticated forecasts of each team's prospects in the rest of the competition, I thought 'it's Friday, let's keep things simple'.