Until this season few outside Argentina, Italy and Spain had taken much notice of Diego Milito. Given the exploits of Lionel Messi, Sergio Agüero, Carlos Tevez and Gonzalo Higuaín, there seemed be no limelight to spare for any additional Argentinian forwards. That changed last night, as Milito scored both goals in the European Cup final to bring his season of seasons to a perfect climax.

He was one of the players José Mourinho bought with the €46m (£40m) that accompanied Samuel Eto'o in exchange for Zlatan Ibrahimovic last summer. The others were Wesley Sneijder, Thiago Motta and Lucio, and together they provided the team with a spine. Milito's goals last night were the ultimate dividend for surely the most successful spending spree in football history, given that it opened the way to an unprecedented Italian treble.

If this was a match for the connoisseur rather than the dilettante, there was a real beauty in each of Milito's strikes. The goal that broke the deadlock in the 35th minute came from a route one move as straightforward in its conception yet as ravishing in its graceful execution as could be imagined, Milito heading Júlio César's goal-kick sideways to Sneijder and running for the perfectly angled return pass before delaying his chip over Hans-Jorg Butt with marvellous delicacy.

The second was even lovelier. This time it was Eto'o who measured the ideal ball from Sneijder's usual position in the centre, inviting Milito to run down the inside-left channel. The Argentinian feinted as he twisted Daniel Van Buyten this way and that before turning back inside, opening his body and guiding a shot with his right instep past Butt's left hand.

Vision, timing, flawless technique and sangfroid – these two goals had everything a great striker needs, plus a sense of lyricism in the fluency of his movement. The 30-year-old Milito is hardly a fancy striker, not a Messi taking your breath away with a trick or a Tevez galvanising the stadium with elemental force, but his economy has been just as devastating this season, and it will be interesting to see the sort of treatment he receives this summer in South Africa from another Diego, the utterly unpredictable Maradona.

In many ways, not least physically but also in their fox's nose for the scent of prey, Milito is reminiscent of a sturdier Claudio López. Both men started their top-flight careers in Buenos Aires with Racing Club de Avellaneda before making their presence felt in Spain and Italy. Milito moved first to Genoa, where he scored 33 goals in 59 matches in the Italian second division. When Genoa were relegated as a result of a match-fixing scandal, he was sold for €5m to Real Zaragoza, where he joined his younger brother, Gabriel, a defender, and spent three seasons in which he scored 53 goals in 108 matches. Relegation for Zaragoza saw him return to Genoa for €13m in 2008, where 24 goals in 31 Serie A matches put him second to Ibrahimovic among the league's leading scorers and earned him a €25m move to Inter.

He has been the club's outstanding player in a season that saw Mourinho fulfilling every one of the desires of his president, Massimo Moratti. In the league there have been 22 goals in 35 appearances, including the last of the season away to Siena, plus the only goal of the Coppa Italia final against Roma earlier this month, and last night he added the fifth and sixth goals of his Champions League campaign.

Against Chelsea at San Siro he set his side on its way to an authoritative victory in the first leg when he capitalised on Sneijder's probing pass, he scored the only goal of the first leg of the quarter-final against CSKA Moscow, and his header sealed the tremendous 3-1 win over Barcelona (and brother Gabriel) in the first leg of the semi-final. A mature and self-effacing player, he has been the essence of reliable efficiency – and, as we saw last night, a goalscorer to rival the best in the history of the greatest of club competitions.

He put a foot wrong only once last night, when misjudging a pass that, had it been better directed, would have put Eto'o through for a third goal in the first minute of stoppage time. Eto'o would have deserved it. There had been much talk about the return to the Bernabéu of Sneijder and Arjen Robben, but the man with the most to prove in this grandest of arenas was the one who joined Real Madrid in 1997, at the age of 16, but made only three appearances in three seasons before being sent out on a series of loans and finally discarded.

Showing a remarkable altruism in fulfilling Mourinho's tactical demands to the letter, Eto'o has been another hero of this remarkable season for the Nerazzurri, unselfishly helping to establish the platform for Milito's historic deeds.