BARCELONA - Barcelona president Joan Laporta says the club's hopes of capturing the Primera Liga title this season have been dealt "a hammer blow" by the 2-1 defeat to Villarreal on Sunday.
The Catalans fell eight points behind league leaders Real Madrid with the defeat in the Nou Camp, leaving Laporta to put a brave face on matters saying it was too early to concede the league title to Real.
However he was far from optimistic about his side's chances of overtaking Los Merengues at the top of La Liga.
Just two weeks ago, a sparkling run of form combined with several shock defeats for Real had pulled Barca to within two points of the summit, but a dramatic downturn in fortune has led to the Catalan side slipping away.
Now an anxious Laporta feels time is running out if the Azulgrana's are to catch their eternal rivals.
"What happened is a hammer blow for us," he said.
"We keep on passing up chances to catch the leader and the league is getting away from us. The fact of the matter is for two weeks we haven't been at the level we should have been at, which has meant Real Madrid have pulled away again.
"We have fewer and fewer chances to win the league, but we still can't say it's lost. We've got 11 games ahead of us, 33 points to play for and we still have a chance."
A crowd of around 50,000 turned up for the game on Sunday, filling slightly more than half of the 98,000 capacity stadium.
But Laporta said the players cannot blame the fans for the poor performance, claiming it is them who should inspire the crowd and not the other way around.
He said: "The players can't use the crowd as an excuse. It's them (the players) who should be inspiring the fans and, unfortunately, they didn't do that.
"Villarreal dominated the entire game, save for a few minutes. We had a bad game, that's sport, we have to accept it.
"The league's still there to play for and we cannot make any more mistakes. We have to keep believing that we can win the league."
