CHALLENGE The_ CHAMPIONS LEAGUE, The_'s CHALLENGE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE

Actually, I'm not aiming for a specific slot; I'd be happy to go through the qualifiers and, if I'm lucky, play in the easier 3rd or 4th brackets :D

No, you didn't quite understand. The point is that the top 16 are divided into groups of 2 in all 4 brackets, and the bottom 16 are added to them. Each bracket has 2 top players and 2 from the qualifiers.