Rueters
Tuesday, October 24, 2000; 12:37 PM

UDINE, Italy, Oct 24 – Late substitute Massimo Margiotta scored four minutes into injury time to give Udinese a 1-0 victory over Greek champions PAOK Thessaloniki in their UEFA Cup second round, first leg match on Tuesday.

Udinese, who have developed a habit of pulling last-gasp winners out of the bag, had laboured all match to break down a patient and well-organised Greek defence.

With less than 30 seconds of injury time to play Argentine striker Roberto Carlos Sosa headed the ball down to Margiotta 12 metres from goal.

The burly midfielder, who came on in the 80th minute for Luis Helguera, bundled his way between two defenders and stabbed a close-range right-foot shot past goalkeeper Kyriakos Tohuroglou.

Udinese had come within seconds of failing to even make the draw for the UEFA Cup.

They had to fight back from 2-0 down to draw 2-2 in the first leg of their Intertoto Cup final against Czech side Sigma Olomouc and then scored twice in the last three minutes of the second leg to take the match to extra time.

Two goals, one of them from Margiotta, finally took them past the Czechs and into the UEFA Cup.

"We'll certainly try to capitalise on it (Margiotta's goal)," coach Luigi De Canio said. "We didn't play well today. We stopped our opponents scoring but we didn't create many chances ourselves."