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The purpose of the Soccer Power Index

Updated: December 7, 2009, 11:24 AM ET
By Nate Silver | Special to ESPN.com

When we were in the development stages of the Soccer Power Index, wrestling with how to make the system as informative as possible, I was asked a seemingly simple question by one of ESPN's soccer writers that I had an incredibly difficult time answering. "Why rate the teams at all?" he asked. "Isn't that what they play the games for?"

Some of this, ultimately, is a cultural difference. We Americans -- we like to rate things, whether it's the schools we send our children to, the food we ...

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