Pablo Zabaleta heaped praise on his Argentina teammate Lionel Messi after the Barcelona star's late strike handed the Albiceleste a 1-0 victory over Iran on Saturday.

The victory left Argentina on the cusp of guaranteeing their spot in the second round of football's showpiece event.

"He is so quick and makes a difference," Zabaleta said after the match.

"Sometimes teams defend like Iran and it can be tough when they have all their players behind the ball but Messi is the best player in the world. We know that we need to try to find him. When he gets the ball he can decide the game."

Saturday's result at the Mineirao stadium came six days after Argentina's unconvincing 2-1 defeat of Bosnia-Herzegovina in Rio de Janeiro.

While admitting the team had so far played below expectations, the Manchester City right-back underlined the importance of stringing together victories.

"Obviously our target was to finish first in the group," the 29-year-old said. "And now with six points we are very close to achieving that.

"In the World Cup the most important thing sometimes is just to keep winning games. And at the moment we are doing this.

"We are not performing as we want to. We have enough quality to play much better in the last two games. This is the World Cup and you can see that a lot of big teams are out because they didn't win all of their games. So sometimes it's just about getting three points."