And in the group stage of the Champions League, Real will have no problem reaching the playoffs, it seems to me that this format will only be beneficial for strong teams.
That's what the Champions league organizer wants as they want the weaker teams to be eliminated faster and only the strong teams left so more people will be interested in watching the champions league games. The players that use to make the champions league interesting are all retiring or have stop playing in Europ, therefore they're looking for new strategy to help increase the interest in the league again. Teams that have very strong players depths are going to be the ones that'll advance to the further stages. Real Madrid reaching the playoffs isn't going to be a problem for them because they can use their second team to play and still defeat the other smaller teams.