Barcelona’s chances of winning the Spanish title looked doomed on Saturday after a 0-0 draw in the local derby with Espanyol.
“We haven’t thrown in the towel but we need to win the next matches and I’m going to motivate them to win the next game,” Barca coach Frank Rijkaard said.
Despite dominating the game for long periods, the Spanish giants failed to find the net in their Camp Nou stadium thanks to a combination of poor finishing and solid defending from Espanyol.
“It’s a disappointment because we had chances, we didn’t score but we also had some bad luck,” Rijkaard said.
Real Madrid now have an eight-point advantage over Barca at the top and a game in hand.
The 30-time Spanish champions could have this season’s league title wrapped up by the time Barca visit the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium on May 7.
Barcelona had a purple patch in the middle of the first half but Xavi Hernandez, Gianluca Zambrotta and Samuel Eto’o couldn’t convert good opportunities. Even the introduction of the often-inspirational Lionel Messi at half-time failed to break the deadlock.
Barca pressed hard for almost the entire second half but were unable to break down a resilient Espanyol, marshalled by their in-form keeper Carlos Kameni.
Espanyol, for their part, ended a four-game losing streak.
Atletico Madrid put together one of their worst home performances of the season on Saturday when they went down 3-1 to Real Betis.
Jose Mari Romero’ thunderbolt from the edge of the area after 14 minutes was only parried by Atletico goalkeeper Leo Franco and Juande Prados was in the right place at the right time to open the scoring for Betis.
Atletico equalized 11 minutes later thanks to a screaming shot from 25m out from Kun Aguero.
However, Betis clinched their third consecutive away win thanks to second-half goals from Xisco Munoz and Jesus Capitan.
Sevilla’s chances of returning to the Champions League took a hit when they slumped to a 4-1 defeat at the hands of Almeria.
Dani Alves headed the ball into his own net midway through the first half to give Almeria the lead.
Things went from bad to worse after the break with Alvaro Negredo getting two goals and Juanma Ortiz another, before Fredi Kanoute got a consolation strike for Sevilla.
At the other end of the table, two goals from Ricardo Oliveira helped Real Zaragoza beat fellow strugglers Recreativo Huelva 3-0.
The result means that Zaragoza and Recreativo swap places with the former climbing out of the relegation zone and the latter slipping into the bottom three.
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