FC Barcelona president Joan Laporta took a dig at Real Madrid and what can be interpreted as perceived favoritism the Catalans' bitter rivals receive from the media and possibly match officials.

Laporta was speaking at an event held in Barcelona on Wednesday afternoon, in which the commissioner for events related to the club's 125th birthday was presented.

As is common in these settings, the president fielded questions from the press at one point in the proceedings with quotes picked up by Spanish outlets such as MARCA.

Talks of a sporting crisis have engulfed the Blaugrana as of late after unconvincing wins, a pair of defeats and a 1-1 draw at Rayo Vallecano last Saturday.

Off the back of last night's 2-1 victory over Porto which guaranteed qualification to the Champions League last 16, however, Laporta brushed this off and tried to put the focus elsewhere.

"Throughout this week there has only been talk of nonsense, when they should have talked about the Rayo game and the penalty [call on] Raphinha or the one they also gave to Lewandowski," Laporta said.

"If this had happened to Madrid, I'm sure it would have been talked about all week."

As per the job Xavi is doing, which has come under much scrutiny as of late for the first time in his two-year reign, Laporta remarked: "We live in constant suffering."

"It's a funny suffering. I was happy for Xavi, he deserves it. He had to overcome very difficult situations, with injured players...

"It gave me a lot of joy to see the goals of the Joaos [Cancelo and Felix], with Pedri running like Gavi and Frenkie [De Jong] returning. We won the ball back, and playing like that we're unbeatable," Laporta added.

Despite the club achieving something that hasn't been done in two years by guaranteeing passage to the UCL knockout phase, Barca and Xavi are by no means out of the woods and have plenty of road ahead.

Tough games await in La Liga, and Laporta tried not to play the victim when broached on what must be done in the near future in order to stay in the title race.

"It's not a question of victimhood. In order to win, we must be much better than our opponents and they [the officials] make things difficult for us. Now we've got the win against Porto and we're in good spirits to beat Atletico [Madrid] and Girona," he concluded.