Psychology books, Austrian restaurant - Xaver Schlager's fascinating story

A 20-minute chat with Xaver Schlager at Nottingham Forest’s pre-season base in southern Portugal is no ordinary new-signing interview.

Everything from the midfielder’s love of psychology books to the restaurant he owns in Austria and the time he was so nervous he threw up on the way to a trial at Red Bull Salzburg is covered. He is a fascinating chap.

Schlager has been with the Reds for barely a day when the Nottingham Post joins him for his first sit-down with journalists since putting pen to paper on a two-year deal. A free agent after leaving RB Leipzig at the end of last season, he linked up with his new club in the middle of their training camp on the Algarve.

It is a crucial period for Forest ahead of the upcoming campaign. By his own admission, Schlager can be his own worst critic so will be going all-in as he prepares for his introduction to the Premier League.

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But if he does get a bit of down time, for the 28-year-old, finding ways to switch off from football is important. It is why he likes to delve into books by Nobel Prize winner Hermann Hesse - a German-Swiss writer who penned the likes of The Glass Bead Game before his death in 1962.

“I love his books,” Schlager says. “He writes very good books. You have to think about it when you read them, and sometimes you have to read them again.

“I read a lot of psychological books. Like mindset, like sense of life, stuff like this. A little bit crazy, but I like it. It brings me down.”

“I like playing golf, being in the nature,” he explains. “When I'm on the golf pitch, there's no phone - anybody can call me but I'm not there, so this is really good.

“I come down there, and also reading brings me down. For me, it's important. I like to live in this world, I like the nature. I'm coming from the countryside in Austria - sometimes it's good to come out of the world with the phone and everything.”

Coming to the Premier League has always been the dream for Schlager. He grew up admiring the Arsenal team of the early 2000s and, aged 20, even quipped in an interview it was his goal to win the title with them one day.

“It was a dream when I was a child,” Schlager says of playing in English football’s top flight. “You start supporting a team and Arsenal was my team when I was young.

“There was the team with Thierry Henry, Patrick Vieira, Dennis Bergkamp. This was a huge team, a great team. They are great players. There are some idols there.

“But it's my work to play football and this was a dream from the small Xaver, now I have other dreams. Some dreams will happen, some dreams not. But maybe there are some new dreams to be written, so everything is possible.

“But yes, the goal was always to come to the Premier League. When you're from Austria, the first step is to go to Germany. Germany is the easiest step for an Austrian guy because you have the same language, the same culture, everything is similar.

“But then the next step is out of this comfort zone. The last years showed, the Premier League is the league. It's the best league, for me.

“English teams won the Europa League the last two years in a row. The Conference League, the same. Tottenham were in the Champions League but were almost relegated. So you see how hard the league is, it is tough.

“If I want to get better, I have to go to the best league. I have to go to the challenge. This is a big challenge now.

“A lot of people are saying it would be good if I joined the Premier League. I have the style to play here. But I never played in the Premier League so I have to look how it is. I have to see how the games are, how the opponents are and then I will see if I fit or not.”

When he first started out in football, Schlager was a goalkeeper. It was a position he didn’t last long in, though. His mother would stand behind the goal, instructing him to dive a certain way, but he soon grew weary of picking the ball out of the back of the net.

“I was three years old. My mother was behind the goal and would say ‘left’ and ‘right’. The opponents only scoring,” the Austrian grins. “And then I said, I don't want this! I think I'm also too small. After, I wasn't a goalkeeper. Never!”

Schlager started out with local club St Valentin then joined Red Bull Salzburg’s academy in 2009. Linking up with the latter got off to something of an inauspicious start, however.

“I remember that I was in school. I had four hours or something in school,” Sclager recalls. “And then we drove to Salzburg and I had my first training there.

“They were looking to see if I was good enough. And I go to school, and I was sick. I didn’t feel good. My stomach was hurting. How do you say when everything comes up?

“So then the teacher was calling my mother. My mother, she picked me up. I'm coming home. I sleep one hour, and then I say, ‘let's go’. They were looking at me. OK. Then I go there, train normal, finish.”

That was how it all began for Schlager. He moved on to Wolfsburg in 2019, where he worked with Oliver Glasner.

The opportunity to reunite with his countryman on the banks of the Trent, following Glasner’s own move to Forest this summer, was a big draw for Sclager after four years with Leipzig. And he is no doubt the 51-year-old can bring success to the club.

“Of course,” Schlager replies when that idea is put to him. “He brings success to Eintracht Frankfurt. He brings success to Crystal Palace. He brings success to Wolfsburg.

“Wolfsburg are now relegated to the second league in Germany and when he was there we were playing in the Champions League. It's a big difference.

“I think every player gets better with him because he is a good coach. You learn a lot from good coaches. He has a good plan and then you learn something from him.

“He's really straight. He knows his tactics, he has a plan and he wants to do this. He wants to give the best for the team. I like his strategy, I like his plan.”

In addition to being familiar with Glasner’s style of play, Schlager also knows several of his coaching staff. It means, despite being the newcomer, he is well versed on what to expect - more so than most of his new teammates.

“But I think you have to play good to get respected,” the Austria international reasons. “Maybe it's a little bit easier to know some people, but in the end you have to perform.

“We have known each other a long time. We talked, but we also stayed in contact when he was at Crystal Palace and the time between. We stayed in touch the whole time.

“Sometimes you come together again and sometimes not. Now, it was perfect timing. He's moving, I want to move, so it was perfect timing.

“I was seven years in the German Bundesliga, I saw a lot there. My feeling was I want to change something, I want to see something new, I want to see a new league.

“As footballers, you are privileged that you can go to another country, work for two, three, four years and come back. I said, OK, I want a new adventure, I want something new.

“Oliver was coming to Nottingham. I've known him since Wolfsburg and I know how he's working. And then I saw a good club with a good coach and then I want to join. I think there is a good team, a good manager, and this is a good start to getting successful.”

Success is something Schlager clearly craves. It sums up his attitude that he wasn’t simply happy to experience the recent World Cup with Austria - he wanted more than being dumped out in the round of 32 by eventual winners Spain.

“It was a great experience but not more,” he reflects. “We didn't perform like we wanted.

“I can say it was a good adventure, but I'm not the guy to say I'm going there just to be there. I want to play good.

“I want to win. I'm a football player, I want to be successful. I want to play good. And if this does not happen, I'm angry.

“I accept when somebody is better. I accept this if somebody is winning. Like Spain, they killed us; they were clearly better. They destroyed us. But then I'm the guy, OK, they can play like this, I also want to play like them. Because I think you can learn a lot from other guys and the more you play on this stage, you're getting better.

“This is my goal. I want to play again on this stage, I want to play again like the good teams and against the good players, because then you're getting better and better.

“A lot of people say I'm very critical with myself, but it's my kind of style. Maybe after my career I’ll be satisfied. But as long as I'm in my career, I'm very ambitious.”

Expect Schlager to lead by example in the Garibaldi. He was vice-captain at Leipzig and sees it as his role to assist younger players and to help his teammates shine.

“I think everybody who's on the pitch should take the responsibility. It's not only one or two players who are the captain or vice-captain,” he says.

“I think it's good that I'm playing long in football. When you're a young player, you don't know everything because you're new in this world. Now I'm really getting old and sometimes it's very helpful.

“I want to help everybody. If somebody needs help or if somebody needs advice, I go there and help them. But I'm not like a teacher and saying they must do this or that. The great mind and I know everything? No, I don't know anything. If somebody's asking me how to do something, I want to help him. But I'm not the guy to give advice to everybody.

“I think I'm a hard-working midfield 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 - I'm not the guy of this. I want to play good football, hard-working style.

“Maybe I'm not as skilful, like doing some dribbling all the time - maybe that’s too risky for me. I'm not the quickest or fastest, not like a winger. But I want to play smart, I want to play fast, I want to be quick in my head. I want to play easy passes. The most important thing is I want to make my teammates around me better so they can feel free.”

Assisting others sums Schlager up. It is why he has a restaurant in his homeland, serving Austrian food - to help give back to the community where he grew up and to boost an industry struggling since the pandemic.

“I like to cook, but I don't like to cook for 70 people,” he laughs. “But I started out in my village, started playing football there, and I learned a lot from my village. They're really good people.

“We have a culture in Austria. You go to a restaurant, drink beer, speak a lot. Over the last years, for the restaurants, it's going bad because a lot of people, especially when it was corona, started staying at home - drinking their beer at home, meeting at home, not in restaurants - and a lot of restaurants are closed.

“We want to give something back to the city. We opened a new restaurant - a point where you can meet, where you can eat something and chill. It's now one year open and it's going very well.”

Forest will hope Schlager’s time Trentside goes the same way.

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