Lazio may have lost the Rome derby last night, but the player who really caught the eye was Argentine sensation Mauro Zarate. Carlo Garganese believes we are looking at a true phenomenon, someone who shouldn’t be written off reaching the level of the great Lionel Messi…

During one of Mauro Zarate’s innumerable solo runs at the Stadio Olimpico last night, the 21-year-old cut inside Daniele De Rossi, stopped the ball dead, then effortlessly, almost arrogantly, dropped his left shoulder before waltzing past the midfielder for a second time.

My initial thought was: “This is De Rossi, one of the world’s best holding midfielders. How can a player of such class and calibre be made to look so ordinary?”

I shrugged off this ‘isolated incident’ at first until, five minutes later, Zarate repeated the trick on the same player. It was there and then that I knew just what a phenomenon the Buenos Aires-born frontman really was. Roma may have gone on to win the derby and take home the bragging rights but, if we are to look at the bigger picture, the real winner was Zarate.

In modern football there are very few individual stars. Most sides are built on team-work, organisation, and athletes. It is becoming harder and harder for the skilful players, the ‘footballers’, to find space, as many coaches consider them incompatible luxuries.

In Mauro Zarate you have a player who is worth the admission fee alone. In fact I can say unequivocally that there is not a player in Serie A who I would rather watch right now than the Velez Sarsfield youth product. Fast, stocky, skilful, creative, both-footed, brilliant at set-pieces, with confidence, character and a winning mentality – Zarate seemingly possesses everything that the classical support striker requires.

The forward showcased all these qualities against Roma last night. At times in the first half he was unplayable, as he constantly demanded the ball and twisted and turned his way past man after man. He created at least two clear-cut chances for his team-mates, and looked like making something happen every time he touched the ball.

Biancocelesti President Claudio Lotito, who should never be taken too seriously, declared during the summer that “Zarate is better than Lionel Messi.”

Of course most people laughed at this statement at the time, including many Lazio fans themselves. I would advise those who are still chuckling to hold their laughter, and I have no fear in saying that Zarate has the ability to get very close to the levels of the great Messi, who is the best player in the world at this current time.

Of course Zarate is only three months into his Serie A career, he is yet to play in Europe, and it would perhaps be wise to see how he does over a longer period of time before making any rash assessments. However, it is clear that Zarate is a prodigious natural talent, who plays in such an unpredictable way, with such a range of armoury, that it will be very difficult for defenders to work out his style of play, as sometimes happens with fresh-faced newcomers.

Watching Rangers progress past Fiorentina into the final of the UEFA Cup on Thursday night brought back memories for Carlo Garganese of Argentina at Italia 90’.

There was a sense of déjà vu about the match at the Stadio Franchi last night - a team with little talent or ability defeat their opponent via the use of negative and cynical tactics, and with the aid of a penalty shootout.

Where have we seen this before?

Well think back to World Cup Italia '90 and the universally-detested Argentina team, who somehow made it all the way to the final in Rome. That team contained just two players with any real attacking ability, one was Claudio Caniggia (ironically a future Rangers player), and the other was of course Diego Maradona, who was dreadfully unfit and playing through injury.

Carlos Bilardo’s men were the modern definition of anti-football. They scraped their way through the group stage, having lost to Cameroon in the opener, and having beaten the USSR only after Maradona had a clear handball off the line not spotted by the referee.

In the second round against Brazil, Argentina defended with 10 men behind the ball, and were battered from start to finish by their bitter rivals, only to win 1-0 courtesy of their one attack of the game, a piece of Maradona genius in the second half, who set-up Caniggia for the winner.

The negativity continued in the quarter final against a far superior Yugoslavia, who contained stars such as Dragan Stojkovic, Dejan Savicevic, and Darko Pancev from the wonderful Red Star Belgrade outfit of the time. The game went to penalties, where Sergio Goycochea, a clown of a goalkeeper who could do nothing except save spotkicks, proved to be the hero.

Onto the semi-final against Italy in Naples. In truth the Azzurri did not play their best game (mainly due to their ‘choker’ coach Azeglio Vicini) but by the same token, they were the only side trying to attack, and all looked good after Toto Schillaci gave them an early lead. Caniggia equalised in the 67th minute following an horrendous Walter Zenga mistake, and Argentina resorted to their negative, spoiling tactics. They wasted time at every opportunity, and it couldn’t have been any clearer, just like with Rangers last night, that they were playing for penalties.

Also like the Scots, they had a man sent off in extra time, Ricardo Giusti, and most importantly of all, they succeeded in the shootout in front of a heartbroken home crowd.

Anti-football won the day, and never could this have been more illustrated than by the fact that Roberto Donadoni, the brilliantly skilful Milan winger, who had been unplayable all night, and the clear man-of-the-match, ended up being the man who missed the most decisive spot-kick.

In the final itself against West Germany, Argentina played for penalties from the first whistle. Their shameful pessimism contrived to make the match possibly the worst in the whole history of the World Cup, yet ironically they were defeated by an 85th minute penalty by Andreas Brehme. It was never a penalty in a million years, but many would say that justice had been served.

There has been a strangely similar path to the final of this season’s UEFA Cup for Rangers.

The Scots used negative tactics to progress past Panathinaikos, Werder Bremen, Sporting Lisbon, and of course Fiorentina. In these eight games, which amount to 750 minutes of football, Rangers scored just five goals, at an average of once every one-and-a-half games.

Walter Smith’s men of course must be given great credit. They realised that on a technical level, they were no match to any of these sides, yet they made up for it with wonderful tactical and defensive organisation, not to mention a few cynical tricks that have perhaps been more associated with Southern Europeans and South Americans in the past. The centre back pair of Carlos Cuellar and David Weir, in particular, have been magnificent.