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

The early elections will shorten 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 the sports director Andoni Zubizarreta, which was followed by the resignation of his assistant Carles Puyol, and a week after the club lost its appeal against the Fifa-imposed transfer ban.

“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.”

He added: “It is a club which is functioning well. We are going to construct a new stadium and on the sporting front we are still in all the competitions.

“I ask that there is ‘fair play’ among all the candidates and we all concentrate on what is best for the club.

“It is best that mandates are completed but there has been too much tension over the last few weeks. We will continue our programme now and there will be no changes there. I have talked with the other board members but it is me that takes the decisions.

“We will seek re-election. We started in 2010 and we want to keep going.”

Reflecting on the sacking of Zubizarreta, Bartomeu said: “Sometimes as president one has to take difficult decisions. I lost confidence in Zubizarreta and as I had been the one to hire him following [Pep] Guardiola’s recommendation, I decided to be the one to dismiss him.

“There are people that have associated Zubizarreta’s dismissal with the Fifa ban. I have already stated that Zubizarreta had no responsibility regarding the issue of the Fifa ban.

“He had nothing to do with those signings. Zubizarreta did very good things and others that weren’t that good but I appreciate him. However, our confidence had deteriorated. We are now looking for his replacement. The new sporting director has to know this club, our way of playing.”

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