It looks like today, the calculation for the draw (by the quality of the teams) has changed.
I set my weaker players in the first squad and still I can see my team as 6*.
In the past, when I did that, the avg quality of the team was very low so usually I was playing with one of the weaker opponents of the other group.
I did that only for the semi-finals as it had no meaning to repeat for the final.
If I would play there with a weaker opponent, another member of my group would play with a stronger than him (her).

* But I 'm not sure if this helped at all in the draw of my group as we still played with strong opponents.

Anyway, it seems now that the draw will be more focus in creating pairs with similar quality.
Due to that, I can't see any advantage to have a strong 7* team for associations.
I think it's better to have a simple 5* team and try to do a good coaching during the match.