PublicBar in Salvador's hip Rio Vermelho district was packed by the time Thiago Silva led the Brazilian team out for the ­national anthems on ­Friday. Despite being thousands of miles from Fortaleza, where the game was being played, and a world away from the ­craziness of Salvador's downtown and its jampacked Fan Fest, there was an atmosphere befitting any stadium on the planet.

The Brazilian national anthem was sung along with as much gusto as the players on the big screens and Colombia's theme was respected with ­silence and eyes cast on the only shirt-wearing fan in the venue. You could cut the tension with a defense splitting through ball.

Cheers from the hundreds packed into the bar greeted kickoff and they got more ­raucous when Brazil took the lead through the captain's bundled finish from a Neymar corner minutes after the game began. The cheers were led by the venue's baile funk DJ who dropped some dub-heavy pro-Brazil vocals whenever anything positive happened for the boys in canary yellow.

Nerves and the abandonment of them through song were the order of the first half as everyone in the bar chewed through their nails while the players kicked lumps out of one another on screen.

Halftime could not come soon enough for the fans but a 1-0 lead was something to be savored. Speaking to fans outside during the interval it was clear that they worried the Brazilian team was over-reliant on ­Neymar and there was no idea as to why Scolari could not call on a better strike force to ­support the Barcelona boy ­wonder. There was no expectation that Brazil would win, merely desperate hope that ­Rodriguez would be silenced and Colombia would not launch a fightback to trouble the hosts.

It all looked so good when David Luiz showed reason for his exorbitant transfer fee from Chelsea to Paris Saint-Germain. A great free kick got a better reaction and the bar rocked with delight.

It was delight that was short-lived as the Colombians piled on the pressure in an ­attempt to get back in the game. Nerves crept in and then took over. ­Every passage of play was ­greeted with a sigh, a gasp or the verge of tears.

When Colombia scored you could have heard the hair ­Brazil's fans were pulling out drop but for the chewing of nails painted in the Brazil flag. They saw the game out as nervously but the final whistle brought more bombastic dub and some relief until the potential impact of Neymar leaving the game on a stretcher came into focus.