The comedian Chris Rock does a great routine in which he mimics people who congratulate themselves for doing things they're supposed to do anyway. "'I take care of my kids.' You're supposed to take care of your kids! 'I've never been to jail.' What do you want – a cookie? You're not supposed to go to jail, you low-expectations-having motherfucker!"

And so to a week in which the much-vaunted football family has been swift to foreground its civilised response to the horrible misfortune of Fabrice Muamba. A 23-year-old father of one suffers cardiac arrest on the pitch in front of a football crowd, and ever since it has been difficult to avoid those fostering collective pride at the reaction. It has "brought out the best in football"; it has allowed fans to show that there are things "bigger than football"; it has made all manner of people "proud of football".

Even that evening's Match of the Day pundits were noting reverentially the good behaviour of the White Hart Lane crowd, as though watching the fight to save someone's life supportively were the most commendable of things. I wish I couldn't already picture the mawkish segment that will feature in December's Sports Personality of the Year, introduced by Gary Lineker with that terrible, gear-crunching change in tone as he recalls "one week in March that showed how united we really are". Yeah, it was the worst of times, but it was also the best of times. Well done EVERYBODY.

As for "the best" in football, by that is apparently meant basic compassion. Which, if you think about it, seems devastatingly insulting to football. In fact, it's hard to escape the conclusion that to class the general reaction to Muamba's plight as admirable is to make a profound category mistake. When evaluating a person or persons' behaviour, it's surely vital to consider whether they might really have behaved any other way – and if so, what else they might have done.

For instance, of my distant acquaintance – happily – is a woman who is widely held to be quite poisonous, seemingly never more content than when spreading malicious gossip or delighting in the misfortunes of those she calls friends. But it is strange how often it is said in her apparent defence that around 35 years ago she saved a child who was floundering in a swimming pool. To which the only reasonable response is: what on earth was the alternative? Standing four foot away and deciding not to get her clothes wet and carry on enjoying a glass of wine?

This is a "dilemma" football's current self-congratulators might usefully bear in mind. When the alternative action is so monstrous as to be clinically diagnosable as psychopathic, then I can't really go along with those who reckon not succumbing to it is some form of personal and collective triumph.

In the case of the woman of my distant acquaintance, it is quite unthinkable that she would not have hopped into the pool and fished the child out. In the case of Muamba, alas, it is all too thinkable that the classic "few idiots" – or few hundred idiots – could have made some sort of hay out of his near-death distress.

So instead of congratulating itself on its eminently civilised reaction to poor Muamba's suffering, the football family might instead care to wonder to what a pretty pass things have come for a basically humane reaction to be deemed so remarkable. How low does the game have to have sunk before not directing abuse at a player receiving CPR, not chanting something repulsive about his partner, or not ranting that Bolton should have played on with 10 men for the time-wasting is deemed to be a behavioural win?

Yet you can scarcely move for those seeking to emphasise, in ever more impressed tones, how well everyone's done. By doing so they presumably seek to turn a young man's shocking and life-threatening misfortune into something of which we can all be proud. That is questionable enough – and by implication casts football as a place where humane norms disappeared long ago. Looked at another way, this has been quite the opposite of a noble week for football.

• This article was corrected on 23 March 2012 because the original said that Fabrice Muamba suffered a heart attack. He suffered cardiac arrest.

The Barça code



Disappointing news, meanwhile, for those who hoped a new dimension had been brought to watching Barcelona play. Earlier this week, a clip purporting to be from Syrian state TV did the rounds. Its claim? That Barça are sending coded messages to Syrian rebels via their tactical formations – most notably in last December's clásico, when they were communicating details of weapon smuggling routes. "A run from Andrés Iniesta is said to portray the first part of the route," ran Yahoo's take on the video, "while the end of the move, where Messi passes the ball, indicates the successful handover of the shipment."

Not unpredictably, perhaps, the video has since been ruled a hoax. Some may already feel that 90 minutes watching Lionel and friends threatens to bring on Stendhal syndrome, which sees the sufferer almost faint at a concentration of beauty in one place. But bravo to the hoaxers for exposing other people's willingness to believe the theory was the work of Assad's cheerleaders. Clearly the new benchmark for despotic madness is claiming there is even more to Barcelona than meets the eye.