Bug when theming a field inside a collection?

I have a field collection called field-list and inside that collection I have a field called field_extratext.

So I created a tpl file field--field-extratext--field-list.tpl.php and inside that file I have print render($content); .

This works fine and the value gets printed, but if I change the contents of field--field-extratext--field-list.tpl.php to

<span><?php print render($content); ?></span>

it renders nothing!

This

<?php print '<span>' .render($content). '</span>'; ?>

renders nothing.

<span>TEST</span>

renders just fine.