

After the vuvuzela, the caxirola. The World Cup in Brazil is still more than a year away and already the marketing campaign for the tournament's stadium soundtrack is under way.

For most of the tournament's existence, football matches at the World Cup have sounded pretty much like football matches anywhere else. Singing, booing, whistling and moments of near silent indifference or suspense (that will be the penalty shoot-outs). You would also have heard the occasional rattle in England in 1966, but the rattle has long since been banned from matches as an offensive weapon. Shame the same can't be said for the annoying trumpeter playing The Great Escape in the few matches England contest before being knocked out on penalties.

Then came the 2010 tournament in South Africa and the vuvuzela, a metre-long plastic horn, whose sound dominated the aural landscape. Some viewers – along with a few players – complained of the noise; others, including myself, found it added to the TV experience by drowning out some of the more banal commentary and punditry. It was subsequently banned by Uefa from all European competitions.

What was best about the vuvuzela was that its appearance seemed unplanned. It felt as if the South African football fans were thrilled to have the World Cup in their country and were enjoying it in their own way. The vuvuzela came to define the World Cup more than the football ever did, in the same way as Mexico 1986 will be for ever linked in the memory with the Mexican Wave, or Italia 90 with the sound of Pavarotti (though ITV was to thank for that). If the vuvuzela was the result of an elaborate marketing scam, it was one that was particularly well done.

And so we come to the caxirola (that's pronounced something like cashirawla, by the way), concrete proof that no moment of spontaneous expression should go commercially unexploited. The caxirola is an instrument designed by a committee of the Brazilian Ministry of Sport with football in mind: a yellow and green piece of recycled plastic – small enough to fit on one hand – that looks a little like a hand grenade but which makes an inoffensive and not very loud rattling sound. I can't wait. The Brazilians should have gone the whole hog and just handed out bottles of valium for football fans to shake.