For former Celtic manager Wilfried Nancy, relationism is not the opposite of structure. The game still depends on players connecting around the ball, creating time for each other and knowing when to leave their positions.

In his first Training Ground Guru interview since leaving Celtic, Wilfried Nancy said his football is “about connection” and that “connection for me is more important than everything.” When asked whether he was close to Jamie Hamilton’s idea of relationism, he answered: “I do both.” He called it “minestrone soup”: positional play gives players enough structure to see the game, but “the most important… is the connection between four players.”