  In these proceedings, we extend the discussion of the pion PDF obtained by
NLO QCD analysis in the Fant\^omas4QCD framework. Our pion analysis uses a
state-of-the-art statistical methodology that accounts for the epistemic
uncertainty. Fant\^omas4QCD, designed to handle multiple functional forms for
solving the inverse problem, systematically explores a variety of solutions for
PDFs, thereby improving estimates of epistemic uncertainty. Through this novel
approach, we interpret our results for the valence sector, considering various
non-perturbative methods available for predicting the pion PDF. We emphasize
the distinctions between (global) QCD analyses and QFT-based calculations.
