He was the first Brazilian to score (at the right end) at the World Cup, the first Brazilian to be booked in the World Cup and he also scored a decisive penalty. He trotted round in a corona of attention, always demanding the ball, taking every corner and free-kick, the demands of his country that he should win them the World Cup apparently loud in his ears. Yet this wasn’t a convincing performance, either from Neymar or Brazil.

This is supposed to be Neymar’s World Cup, just as the Confederations Cup was Neymar’s tournament. When the teams were read out before kick-off, it was his name that got by far the biggest cheer. He has largely been kept under wraps by Brazil’s media machine, before being chosen as the player to sit alongside Luiz Felipe Scolari at the pre-match press-conference. His performance there was immensely impressive: relaxed, confident and good-humoured – exactly what you’d hope for from the king-in-waiting.

The importance of Scolari to him was evident: at one point, the pair slapped hands after combining in a typically weak, press-conference joke; at another, as he seemed on the verge of comparing himself to Romário and Ronaldo, Scolari cuffed him lightly on the back of the head, before covering for his intervention with a mumbled gag about his haircut.

“The star player will be the champion because if you’re the star player and don’t win the World Cup, it doesn’t make sense,” Scolari said, both a warning to Neymar that his fate is bound up with the team and an acknowledgement that this is expected to be his coronation as part of a Brazilian triumph.

Bonding a team is one of Scolari’s great strengths: having settled on a starting XI he has barely altered it over the past months, the spirit he has generated based on mutual sacrifice. Hulk owes his popularity precisely to that willingness to subjugate ego to team ethic (at national level at least), and that was perhaps why he operated largely on the left, occupying Darijo Srna, as Neymar drifted infield.

In the Confederations Cup it took Neymar just three minutes to get off the mark, scoring with a superb volley against Japan. He spoke this week of how he wanted his “first goal” – for he seems to have no doubt there will be multiple goals – in the tournament to be “simple”, preferably “without the goalkeeper”.

There was an early goal, after 29 minutes, but it wasn’t easy, and it was to equalise rather than to put Brazil ahead. Picking up the ball centrally after energetic work from Oscar, Neymar strode forward and clipped a low shot, perhaps not entirely cleanly, through Dejan Lovren’s legs, past the sprawl of Stipe Pletikosa and in off a post.

His relief, and that of Brazil, was obvious, but he was maybe a little fortunate still to be on the pitch. Three minutes earlier, in leaping for a high ball, he had thrust his forearm into the throat of Luka Modric, having clearly glanced at the Croatian first. There was not great force in the outstretching of the arm, which is presumably what persuaded Yuichi Nishimura, a referee who was decidedly generous to Brazil all night, that the offence did not constitute violent conduct.

There had been flickers of Neymar’s ability before that, notably one run in which he held off Ivan Rakitic and cut the ball back just too far from Paulinho for him to take advantage. For the most part, though, Neymar’s evening consisted in hopeful darts that led him into thickets of Croatian legs, evidence both of the energy and discipline of their closing down and possibly also of a tendency for him to try too much, as though the pressure to carry this Brazil side caused him to overplay.

There was a backheel to nobody that he tried to blame on Dani Alves, a moment when he simply fell over, as though the weight of expectation had simply proved too much, and numerous collapses to the turf followed by plaintive looks at Nishimura, who was usually keen to oblige.

The desire for Neymar to succeed is bound up in Brazil’s desire for him to become the best player in the world – or, at the very least, a better player than Lionel Messi. This, in a sense, is a second chapter of the eternal Pele v Maradona debate. In their ongoing tussle, Maradona has had the better start to the World Cup: whereas Pelé has been dismissed as out of touch and conservative for his criticism of the protestors, Maradona, as well as doing a genuinely amusing turn as an annoying armchair in an advert for the auction site Bom Negocio on Brazilian TV, has been pouring scorn on Brazil in general and Pelé in particular. “Neymar today is Pelé,” he said. “In Brazil he is built up, everyone looks to him – you look forward and he is the big figure that Brazilian football has. The distance between Messi and Neymar is the same as the one between Maradona and Pelé.”

Although for much of the game Neymar – in impact if not appearance – resembled late-era Maradona, showing glimmers of genius but trying to do too much, and slowing the game down as a result. With the pressure of the opening game gone, he and Brazil should improve, but they seemed too often a one-man side, when they really ought not to be. They will not always find referees as accommodating as Nishimura.