1) Cristiano Ronaldo against his old city rivals

Let’s just check in on how Ronaldo has faired against the team that played on the other side of Madrid, shall we?

• 31 matches
• 22 goals

That’s good, right?

Most of those goals came in La Liga, but there’s definitely a few Champions League goals against Atlético Madrid sprinkled in there as well. And this is obviously the point in the competition each year where Ronaldo starts to truly be Ronaldo.

It’s not like Ronaldo was bad in the group stage. He wasn’t great, either, with his WhoScored rating from his five group stage starts — although one of those was hindered by a red card against Valencia — nearly a full point lower than what he’s averaging in Serie A this season.

2) Paulo Dybala coming off his Friday night return to form

A whole bunch of our post-match coverage from Friday night’s 3-0 win over Frosinone surrounded around a certain Mr. Dybala — and for good reason. Because when you go over three months without a league goal, then there’s a reason for somebody like Dybala getting a whole bunch of attention when that streak gets snapped.

Now, as we probably thought after Dybala’s short yet pretty good spell off the bench against Sassuolo a week and a half ago, we ask this question: What’s next, Paulito?

To compare Atlético Madrid’s defense — injuries and all — to that of Frosinone is pretty much like putting the latter in the former’s class simply based on them being included in the same sentence. One is one of Europe’s premier units. The other? Well, you can probably guess that it resembles their placement in the Serie A table.

So, with Dybala now looking to have at least a little bit of his groove back, Juve enters the point in the season where they’ll become just that much more of a dynamic team with its No. 10 clicking.

If Allegri chooses to play Dybala behind Mario Mandzukic and Ronaldo, then so be it. If Dybala is technically out on the right wing, don’t expect him to spend every living breath there since Allegri loves to give his forwards as much freedom as anybody.

Either way, Dybala will be playing and, as we are starting to see, playing pretty well, too.

3) Juventus’ defense against Antoine Griezmann, Alvaro Morata and maybe even Diego Costa

This would be a much more stress-filled section of the match preview if Giorgio Chiellini and Leonardo Bonucci had not played last Friday against Frosinone. It was to the point where, when Into the Calderon sent me some questions for their end of the Q&A for Wednesday’s first leg, I pretty much answered them with the assumption that Chiellini and Bonucci weren’t going to play and that it was going to be a complete race to full fitness for both of Juve’s starting center backs.

I am happy that is not the case.

There is, however, the task of trying to contain an Atlético Madrid attack that has one of the best strikers in the world (Griezmann) and the Ex Factor (Morata) hanging over all of our heads as Juve take the field Wednesday night.

We know about Griezmann. We know about Morata — and this won’t be the first time that one of Juventus’ old Champions League heroes from earlier in the Allegri era has played against his former team.

But, as we’ve also seen throughout Juve’s Champions League campaign this season, things aren’t exactly so routine despite the fact that announcers will tell you they’re so incredible at the back.

The good part in all of this is that we don’t have to worry about this being either of Chiellini or Bonucci’s first game back from injury. They got that out of the way against Frosinone, looked good along the way and now have their legs back under them after combining to miss about a month’s worth of time.

As much as Allegri says that Juventus will need to score in Madrid to have a chance, the second leg will matter so much more if Juve head back to Turin knowing that Atlético Madrid has a zero on its end of the aggregate scoreline. I know I would like Juve’s chances just that much more if it ends up being the case.