A few days before Play the Game starts in Cologne, Play the Game’s International Director, Jens Sejer Andersen, gave his opinion on how corruption in sport could be fought when on September 28th he was invited to speak at a hearing held by the Sports Committee of the German Parliament, Der Bundestag.

Senior FIFA Vice President Julio Grondona's bid for a ninth term as Argentina Football Association president is being challenged by Fernando Raffaini, head of the football club Velez Sarsfield.

That FIFA has governance problems is now generally recognized, but what are the prospects for reforms, asks Roger Pielke in this analysis based on the paper 'How Can FIFA be Held Accountable?', which will be presented at Play the Game 2011 in Cologne in October.

In the third contribution to Play the Game’s series on corruption and good governance in sport, Swiss journalist Jean François Tanda looks at the recent problems in FIFA and argues that the main problem is the lack of willingness to investigate corruption inside FIFA.

FIFA confirms the hearing on Mohamed Bin Hammam’s appeal will take place next week. Leading up to the hearing, Bin Hammam has sent an open letter to FIFA repeating his innocence and indirectly accusing Sepp Blatter of corruption.

In the run up to Play the Game 2011 taking place in Cologne early October, playthegame.org launches a series of comments on corruption and good governance in sport with exclusive contributions from high profile sport leaders and other people with insight or interest in sport governance.

Comment: In this first entry in a comment series Sylvia Schenk, Senior Advisor on sport in Transparency International, opens the sport governance debate arguing that corruption, the lack of transparency and other governance problems is an urgent challenge.

Comment: “Will Caribbean football crumble without the man they called ‘Teflon Jack’”, journalist Lasana Liburd asks in this comment piece discussing how football in the Caribbean will go on after Jack Warner resigned as head of CONCACAF and CFU amid corruption allegations.