A recent survey of Brazilian social media showed that Neymar was getting many more mentions on the Twitter-sphere than all of the rest of the Brazil team put together, including high-profile, charismatic coach Luiz Felipe Scolari.

Of total mentions, Neymar had something like 65 percent. The rest were all reduced to scraps, tiny percentages -- and well down the list of these also-rans was midfielder Oscar, which seems like a tremendous injustice.

Neymar, of course, is the undoubted poster boy of the 2014 World Cup, the young man whose individual brilliance is supposed to carry his country to victory. He is the team's most potent weapon in the last 30 metres of the field. Oscar, meanwhile, has an equally important role to play over a much wider area of the pitch. The slender build and sloping shoulders of the Chelsea youngster belie the fact that this is a player who is important to Brazil over a broad, vital range.

The Chelsea midfielder is three in one. He can drop back to pick up possession from the centre-backs and orchestrate play from deep. Higher up the field he can slip his passes through the opposing defence and put the strikers through on goal, and he can also run beyond the strikers and score the goals himself. It is this versatility that makes him so important.

Tostao, the great from Brazil's 1970 team and perhaps the brightest man ever to pull on the famous yellow shirt, laments the separation of functions that has taken place in the Brazilian midfield over the past 25 years. Much of this had to do with the premature elimination of Brazil's wonderful 1982 World Cup side, with one of the most ball-playing midfields ever assembled on a football pitch. In response, future Selecao sides decided to protect themselves, and, as Tostao wrote recently, "the midfield in Brazil was divided into the 'volantes' (defensive midfielders) who mark and the 'meias' who attack," with a consequent loss of fluidity. The ball has never moved through the team as smoothly as it did in 1982.