With the exception of Slovakia—and a certain soccer power with goalkeeping issues—teams generally are content to register a draw in their World Cup opener. There's good reason for this.

History says that these teams have better-than-even odds of surviving the group stage. Since the World Cup went to its present 32-team format in 1998, 58% of the teams that got one point in their first match ultimately advanced. Good news, then, for the U.S. and for England, too, although the two extra points Robert Green let slip through his fingers on Saturday would have made the English a virtual lock to advance. (86% of opening-match winners have done so.) Likewise, Slovakia can't be happy with its draw Tuesday against New Zealand, widely considered one of the worst teams in the tournament.

Diego Godin of Uruguay tackles Nicolas Anelka of France on Friday Getty Images

Drawing Good Fortune

Since 1998, how teams that tied their opening match have fared in the World Cup

Win 31 5 86.1%
Draw 14 10 58.3%
Loss 3 33 8.3%

But the odds of moving on after a draw might be even better than 58% suggests, once you weed out teams that got a draw but never were likely to advance to begin with. In 2006, Saudi Arabia and Trinidad and Tobago—two big underdogs that were outclassed in their final two games—each got a tie in their opener, obscuring the numbers a bit.

Conversely, teams that entered the World Cup in the top 30 of the Elo ratings have advanced 69% of the time after an opening draw. The U.S. and England are both well within the top 30, as are Mexico, Italy, Portugal, Ivory Coast and France, all of which tied their opening matches.

The 2006 World Cup should be reassuring to the French. (The way it started—not the way it finished, of course, with a head-butt and an ugly loss to Italy in the final.) France began that tournament in the same fashion, with a scoreless draw against Switzerland. The French only got a point in their next match, too, against South Korea, but then advanced—with some help from the Swiss, who took out the Koreans—and rolled on to the final.

—Darren Everson