Xaver Schlager, Nottingham Forest new boy and Glasner acolyte: ‘I want to make my team-mates feel free’

Xaver Schlager always had a sense that it was inevitable he would play for Oliver Glasner again.

Over the five years since they last worked together, midfielder and head coach have remained in regular contact. After Glasner left German club Wolfsburg in 2021 — where he had led Schlager and company to qualify for the Europa League and then the Champions League — the two Austrians continued to exchange messages.

Schlager believed they would link up again at some point, and when the 28-year-old became a free agent last month at the end of his contract with RB Leipzig, that became a reality, as Glasner offered a chance to join him at his new club.

Talking to Schlager under the Portuguese sun at the club’s pre-season training camp, it is apparent why the two men were drawn to reunite.

On the pitch, Schlager was a trusted figure in Wolfsburg’s midfield, a player who, by his own admission, gets the greatest sense of achievement out of helping other players thrive: “I want to make my team-mates around me better, so they can feel free.”

Off it, they have a great deal in common.

Both are sons of small northern outposts in Austria: Schlager is from St Valentin, a town with a population of around 10,000; Glasner was raised in Riedau, a village a quarter that size.

Both are deep thinkers. Glasner completed a degree in economics during his playing career with SV Ried, while Schlager is a prolific reader. He enjoys the works of Hermann Hesse, a German-Swiss author who won the 1946 Nobel Prize in Literature and whose writing explores the journey of self-discovery and the duality of human nature: one of his most renowned novels is Steppenwolf, the story of a respectable citizen and his internal wolf-like alter-ego.

“I read a lot of psychological books that explore mindset, sense of life, stuff like this,” says Schlager. “A little bit crazy, but I like it. It brings me down and helps me to relax.

“Hesse is my favourite author. You have to think when you read (one of his books). Sometimes, you have to read it twice.”

But it is a shared belief in Glasner’s football ethos that has brought him and the midfielder back together, with Schlager rejecting interest from other clubs around Europe in favour of this move to Forest.

“We have known each other for a long time,” says Schlager. “We stayed in contact when he was also at Crystal Palace and in the time between. We talked the whole time.

“Of course (I envisaged playing under him again) but, you know, the football life — sometimes you come together and sometimes not.

“Now it was a matter of perfect timing. I said, ‘Let’s go, we do this’. I was seven years in the Bundesliga, but my feeling was I want to change something, I want a new adventure.”

Knowing him so well, what kind of head coach can Forest’s fans — and players — expect in Glasner?

“He’s really straight,” says Schlager. “He knows his tactics, he has a plan, and he wants to do this. I like his strategy, I like his plan. He was very successful in Wolfsburg and in all the jobs he has had after, so the plan is really good.”

The duo also overlapped at Austria’s RB Salzburg — Glasner as assistant manager between 2012 and 2014, and Schlager as a player from 2016-19 after coming through their youth ranks.

The 3-4-2-1 formation that is generally Glasner’s starting point will be familiar to the Austria international, whose 55 appearances for their country include starting all four matches at this summer’s World Cup.

“This I can say: I fit (into Glasner’s philosophy) because he comes from the Red Bull philosophy, so the thinking is really close in how we play,” says Schlager. “I think every player gets better with him, so every player is getting better and better because he is a good coach. You learn something from him.

“I cannot say this (that he and Glasner are similar characters)… people from the outside have to say that…  but maybe we are the same: ambitious, we want to win, we want to play good football.”

It might be an unusual dynamic for Schlager in the Forest dressing room where he is a new addition but also the man who knows the new head coach best.

“In Leipzig, I had the same situation,” he explains. “I was a new signing, and we changed the coach after five games (of the 2022-23 Bundesliga season) to my former coach in Salzburg (Marco Rose),” says Schlager. “Players will ask me about how he (Glasner) works, and I say, ‘Yes, yes, (do) this and this’.

“He’s now one of the most successful coaches from Austria. There is (the late) Ernst Happel; he’s the biggest in Austria, because he won the Champions League, but he (Glasner) won the Europa League. He won the FA Cup, the Community Shield and the Conference League. It’s amazing. People in Austria like his way of working. Everybody’s positive about him.”

So what can Forest fans expect from Schlager?

“I don’t like to talk about me. Everybody should form their own picture,” he says. “I’m a hard-working player who likes to keep the game in the other half. I also want to play football. I don’t like to kick and rush. Maybe I’m not as skilful as some, dribbling all the time — it’s too much risk! I’m not the quickest. But I want to play smart, I want to play fast, I want to be quick in my head. The most important thing is I want to make my team-mates around me better.”

Though Schlager was vice-captain at Leipzig, he believes leadership is something everyone should contribute to. “If somebody needs help or if somebody needs advice, I’ll help them. But I’m not like a teacher. I won’t say, ‘You have to do this or this…’,” he says. 

Schlager also likes to play golf — “I like being in nature, and I have no phone; nobody can call me” — but at the opposite end of the spectrum, he has a business that operates party buses and owns a restaurant close to where he grew up.

“I learned a lot from my village. They’re really good people,” Schlager says. “I started playing football there. We have a culture in Austria: you go to a restaurant, drink beer, speak a lot. A lot of restaurants closed during Covid. With my father and a partner, we said, ‘We want to give something back’. We wanted somewhere where people can meet. Schnitzel is the best dish. I love to cook… but not for 70 people!”

Schlager took pride in playing all four games at the World Cup before Austria were knocked out by eventual champions Spain, 3-0, in the last 32. But his attitude to the tournament says much about his character.

“I want to win. I want to be successful. I want to play good — and if this does not happen, I’m angry,” he says. “The more you play on that stage, you’re getting better. I want to play again against the good teams, against the good players.

“I’m very critical of myself, but it’s my style. Maybe after my career, I can say, ‘OK, it was good’, but I’m very ambitious. I always want more. I have come to Forest because I believe we can be successful.”

And he believes he has been reunited with a head coach in Glasner who is equipped to deliver that success.