When dividing up the teams for the groups in the Champions League tournament they use a ranking system. The top eight teams in pot one, the next eight best in pot two and so on. Then one team from each pot goes into a group.
There are some stipulations though, a group cannot have more than one team from a single domestic league in a group. However, a team that is the current reigning champion of their league isn’t necessarily a “top seed.”
If you win your league you aren’t automatically put in Pot One, so a group can be loaded with teams that won their leagues. For instance, Premier League winners Manchester City, Bundesliga champions Bayern Munich and Russian Premier League champions CSKA Moscow are all in Group E. Manchester City Manuel Pellegrini has struck out at this, and thinks that champions should get into Pot One together so they don’t end up in the same group.
“It is, for the champions. I think that the champions of England and the champions of the German league, with both leagues being among the best leagues in Europe, they deserve to be in pot one,” Pellegrini said, via Sky Sports.
“This season we again have Bayern Munich, Manchester City and CSKA Moscow. I do not think it is good to repeat the group exactly as the year before.
“I don’t think it´s good that the teams who play qualification because they finished fourth in their domestic leagues are in pot 1, where the strongest teams should be.
“In our group we have three domestic champions, the English champions, the German champions, and the Russian champions. So our group seems a bit unbalanced.
“I think we need to find a modification whereby, for example, all teams who play qualification go into pot four and all champions of their respective leagues and have a lot of points in Europe (a high coefficient) go into pot one.
“There is a need for some modifications to not let something like what happened to us happen again, and then on the other hand for the teams who play preliminaries to not appear with the most important ones in Europe.”
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