Barcelona's Bartomeu calls for early club elections at end of season
BARCELONA, Spain --
Barcelona president Josep Bartomeu has called for early club elections to be held at the end of the season, saying Wednesday the increasingly troubled Spanish soccer team needs to ''relieve tension.''
The early elections will cut short the current board's mandate, which was to expire at the end of the 2015-16 season, by one year.
Bartomeu's decision caps a tumultuous week that had led to growing pressure on the board to take action. And it comes two days after Bartomeu fired sports director Andoni Zubizarreta and a week after the club lost its appeal against the FIFA-imposed one-year transfer ban for violating rules regarding the registration of youth players.
''The principal motive to call elections is to relieve tension that the club is living, a tension that is out of proportion,'' Bartomeu said. ''This noise, this tension that is out of proportion inevitably affects the team, of course. That is why we are calling elections, to reduce this tension.''
Bartomeu said he would run for re-election, but did not announce the exact date for the elections. Club statues say the current board should resign before the elections to open a period of campaigning.
Bartomeu has also not yet hired a new sports director to replace Zubizarreta, although he said Wednesday that the club was looking to hire someone from inside the club or who had worked at the club before.
The elections will be the first for the 150,000 or so club members to elect the president and executive board since Sandro Rosell was elected in 2010. Bartomeu replaced Rosell last January after Rosell resigned amid a lawsuit into Neymar's contract.
