The Noisiest Love Story at the World Cup

Oma Hedwig is 75, lives in Hamburg, and loves football. Her husband José is from São Paulo. So when the 2014 World Cup came to Brazil—his country, his people—she did what any reasonable person would do: she invented a percussion instrument.

The ComBinho is four noise-makers in one body: a drum, a rattle, a ratchet, and a three-tone whistle. It looks like something a carnival exploded. It sounds like a vuvuzela’s more socially acceptable cousin. The idea was simple enough—Hedwig wanted José to feel a piece of Brazil without getting on a plane—and somehow that translated into a product that FC Bayern’s Dante Bonfim Costa Santos was actually demoing on television during the tournament.

There’s something genuinely touching about the origin story, buried under the inevitable World Cup marketing machinery. A Hamburg grandmother reverse-engineers Brazilian carnival noise because she doesn’t want her husband to feel homesick. That’s a more human story than most of what the 2014 tournament produced off the pitch.