It doesn’t matter if that’s Alban Lafont in Cyril Théréau’s sex video

What the hell. In the most on-brand move imaginable, a video just popped up featuring Cyril Théréau—unmistakable with his face, tattoos, and trademark crab hands celebration—filming himself dancing, mugging for the camera, and just generally being himself while a couple is clearly having sex in the background. Shared thousands of times on WhatsApp, it’s created quite a kerfuffle.

While nobody can be shocked at Cyril being exactly who we assumed he is, the real problem is that he’s dragged Fiorentina goalkeeper Alban Lafont into the whole affair. While there aren’t any timestamps on the video, making it impossible to date, there are various pictures of the goalkeeper out with the now-injured Cagliari striker from earlier this year, leading various internet denizens to claim that the background man is Lafont.

Now the Viola and France U20 net minder has been forced to issue a statement on the whole affair, posting on Twitter that he’s aware that people are discussing him in conjunction with Théréau’s video. He denies that he has anything to do with it in any capacity and reinforces that this is “a private issue.”

If he says it’s not him, there are only two possible outcomes. The first is that he’s telling the truth, in which case we all ought to leave him alone about it because it’s nothing to do with him. That’s simple enough.

The other possibility is that it is him in the video, that Cyril shot it without his permission, and that Lafont is trying to regain some modicum of privacy that was stripped away from him without his permission. That is a pretty awful thing for a 19-year-old to have to deal with, particularly when the guy who put him in this situation is nearly twice his age. Should this second possibility be the case, we should respect Lafont’s wishes and ignore it. To do otherwise is, at best, creepily voyeuristic. At worst, it’s sexual harassment.

Full credit to Lafont for a dignified response, highlighting that this is a private issue whether or not he’s involved (and again, he says he isn’t) and thus deserves to be dealt with away from the public eye. While it’s a bit embarrassing that the world needs to learn a lesson in decorum from someone who is a teenager, it’s the correct way to handle this whole thing.

I’d also mention that Alban Lafont is good. While he’s still just 19 years old (and again, if it was him, Théréau is an even bigger asshole for putting a kid through this), Alban isn’t your average teenage footballer. For one thing, he’s from a pretty connected, educated family. His grandfather was a professional footballer for 10 years. His mother represented Burkina Faso, first as a handball player and then as a member of Parliament with the People’s Movement for Progress (we can discuss how rad Alban’s mom is at a later date). He’s been around media for his whole life, as both an athlete and a politician’s son, so he knows how to handle himself in the public eye.

In closing, let’s follow Lafont’s lead and not discuss this private matter any further. It doesn’t demonstrate anything about him (other than his grace in a pretty miserable situation of someone else’s devising) and has nothing to do with any of us. Really, all it proves is that Cyril Théréau is exactly as much of a knob as we suspected, and that ought to be the end of it.