Exotic states have been predicted before and after the advent of QCD.
In the last decades they have been observed at accelerator experiments in the sector with two heavy quarks, at or above the quarkonium strong decay
threshold and called X Y Z states.
These states offer a unique possibility for investigating the dynamical
properties of strongly correlated systems in QCD.
I will show how an alliance of nonrelativistic effective field theories and
lattice can allow us to address these states in QCD. In particular I will
explain what are the opportunities and challenges of lattice QCD in this
respect and which new tools should be developed.