At half-time in Brazil’s last World Cup match against Cameroon the local TV director, not content with simply following Neymar all over the pitch, proceeded to follow Neymar off the pitch too. There he was still, chatting to someone in the tunnel. And there he was again posing for a few half-time selfies. A few minutes later, after the briefest of dressing room camera breaks Neymar was back out again, this time with his shorts half pulled down so he could spend a few moments adjusting – in front of hundreds of millions of people on live TV – his pants.

No one, least of all Neymar himself, blinks at such intrusion here. And yet so pervasive is Neymar’s presence at a tournament where even dear old Gary Cahill keeps popping up on the TV playing the guitar in a rap-metal band to promote a Fifa-approved beer, it still seems incredible this level of invasive exposure can simply slide off the surface of an extraordinarily modern, 22-year-old superstar. Neymar is living the most public of all sporting lives. That he seems entirely untouched, able to allow this formidable weather front of diffuse public hunger simply to wash over him, is doubly startling.

It is worth remembering that after an unsettled first season at Barcelona, Brazil’s chief hope entered this World Cup under more sustained and widely angled pressure than any other footballer at any previous tournament. Not just tactically, as Brazil’s best player at a home World Cup, but as a young man caught up in his country’s own continental-scale yearning for a defining success on and off the pitch. Neymar has not blinked. Four goals and two match-winning performances later he has in many ways already proved himself at this World Cup, even as Brazil approach a finely-poised last-16 tie against Chile’s counterattacking buccaneers in Belo Horizonte on Saturday night.

It was perhaps not so clear on television but in the stadium Neymar was very obviously the author of Brazil’s comeback after Croatia’s opening goal, galvanising with his brio and vim what was, briefly, a horribly drained looking group of World Cup favourites. He may or may not end up the world’s leading player, as some journalists in Brazil already routinely suggest he is. But one thing is sure. At this World Cup Neymar is utterly unafraid. How did he get like this? What has he got? And can the rest of us have some?

The answer seems to lie, in part, in a brilliantly-turned piece of management by Luiz Felipe Scolari, whose warm and engagingly paternal double act with his star player already looks like the single most important human relationship at this World Cup. It is one of the great things about elite level sport that success can often be pared back to a single, chasteningly simple winning element. The dominant relationship at the last World Cup was a kind of familial triangulation between Xavi, Andrés Iniesta and the ball. Four years on it seems clear that this expertly maintained Scolari-Neymar axis is Brazil’s own best claim to a trump card.

It is already for Scolari a minor tactical triumph. Frankly, when he was reappointed 18 months ago this World Cup was turning into a nightmare for the host nation, a farrago of structural problems, vertiginous anxiety and a team who had slipped to 22nd in the Fifa rankings. Scolari cut through the mess, focusing on the galvanising effects of that fond, paternal relationship with his star player and transforming a horribly complex challenge into one that looks through these narrowed sights so much more easily grasped. Never mind the fire engines and the helicopters, just look at me. We’re going to get out of this together, Neymar old son.

For those not familiar with the Big-Phil-Little-Ney dynamic in the flesh, Brazil’s first press conference on the eve of the tournament was intriguing, so gurglingly affectionate are the pair of them in public. At one point Neymar began to compare himself to previous winners Ronaldo and Ronaldinho prompting Scolari to cut in, cuffing him fondly on the back of the neck while making an astute diversionary remark about comparable hairstyles. “I hope my first goal is an easy goal,” Neymar announced and you feared a little for this preternaturally confident tyro No10. Fear not, though. Neymar and Felipao have got this one. It’s in hand.

It is a piece of management made all the more impressive by the fact Scolari has known Neymar personally, at least with any intimacy, for only 18 months. But then Scolari is for all his tactical rigidity, brilliantly shrewd in his managing of star players. This has been his special skill in the second half of a picaresque 23-job managerial career after an early ascent built on sturdy, workmanlike success. It seems, buried within that gaúcho flintiness and the extended freedoms he offers his players – forbidding before this World Cup only “acrobatic” sex – that Scolari has a rare ability to let high-end talent breathe. It is a quality he showed first at Palmeiras in the late 1990s when a team driven on by Edmundo and Rivaldo was hailed by some as the best in Brazilian club football history. In 2002 he took Brazil to the World Cup under a different kind of pressure, required simply to allow Ronaldinho, Ronaldo and Rivaldo to bloom. With Portugal he took a more mildly Ronaldo-based team to the final of Euro 2004 and the semis of the 2006 World Cup.

Looking back there is a kind of Scolari’s Angels dynamic here. In the last 20 years 11 different players have been awarded the world’s best player gong. Scolari has worked with seven of them. He cannot claim to have made them what they were but he, more than anyone else, knows the talent. At times he has been tough (witness Romario’s tearful, failed plea for inclusion in the 2002 squad) but mainly the approach has been fond, protective and paternal; most notably, and most pragmatically, with Neymar.

There have been two stages to this, during which Big Phil has played his best player like a wonderfully crafted baby grand piano. Scolari’s first match back in charge was at Wembley in a first defeat by England in 23 years. Ronaldinho looked shot. Neymar flickered on the fringes. Of Brazil’s squad that day 10 players were dumped for this World Cup. Scolari recognised instantly that it was, frankly, Neymar or bust. And he has managed his man beautifully through the last year, maintaining a strong-arm paternal support during a fractured first season in La Liga.

When Neymar was reported to have lost 7kg after a double tonsil operation Scolari was there at his side like the overly supportive dad you are secretly glad to see marching through the school gates. ”He eats at 12pm, at 3pm, at 6pm, at 9pm,” he growled. “He looks phenomenal to me.” When Neymar was criticised by journalists Scolari was there rolling his sleeves up again: “I see him in very different form than the one some Spanish journalists judge him to be in.” Later in the season he could be heard huffing supportively at Barça’s insistence on playing his man on the right. And as Neymar has begun to prosper at this World Cup he has been busy yanking things back. “Neymar can’t win by himself and he can’t lose by himself,” Scolari said three days ago. “He wins with the group and he loses with the group.”

There is perhaps some wishful thinking in this. It is hard to imagine Brazil winning too many more matches at this World Cup without Neymar playing a pivotal role. In a team with two wonky full-backs and a midfield over-crammed with dainty-footed bouncers Neymar is a draught of something exhilaratingly pure. Brazilians love Oscar, an all-round forward of real intelligence and craft, but only Neymar of these Brazilians really plays like a Brazilian. He is above all a subtle player, a relentless little sprite popping up in all areas nudging, prompting, often taking just one touch, and devastatingly swift in his moments of improvisation. With Chile set to provide Brazil’s toughest competitive opponents since Spain last summer, it looks a dreamy combination of style and effectiveness.

And who knows, maybe even a decisive one too. With four matches to take the crown, a single strength can make the difference for the remaining contenders. Argentina have an obvious ace. Germany have the greatest attacking depth. And Brazil have their own strength in Scolari-Neymar, a supremely productive footballing friendship, not to mention a pocket of calm amid all this noise.