Barcelona call for early club elections at end of season

Barcelona: Barcelona president Josep Bartomeu has called for early club elections at the end of the season for the troubled Spanish club.

The early elections will cut short the current board's mandate, which was to expire at the end of the 2015-16 season.

The decision comes two days after Bartomeu fired sports director Andoni Zubizarreta and a week after the club lost its appeal against the FIFA-imposed one-transfer ban.

Bartomeu says he is calling elections to relieve the "tension that the club is going through, a tension that is out of proportion."

Bartomeu replaced former president Sandro Rosell after he stepped down last January while facing a lawsuit involving the contract of Neymar.