ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – When the Tampa Bay Rowdies and FC Cincinnati first met earlier this season at Nippert Stadium, there was one moment above all that stood out.

Rowdies midfielder Marcel Schäfer’s long-range blast in the first half remains one of the most memorable moments of the 2017 USL regular season, at once silencing the Nippert Stadium crowd, and gaining national attention as the No. 2 play on ESPN’s SportsCenter Top 10 that night.

“Yeah, it was really, really good,” Schäfer told Mike Watts on Monday’s edition of USL Coast 2 Coast on Sirius XM FC. “I think the crowd there in Cincinnati speaks for itself, sometimes over 30,000 I think in the U.S. Open Cup against Chicago, it is amazing for [Cincinnati] and the crowd was really special, fantastic atmosphere, and then a second after the goal it was silence, nobody speak, it was ‘wow’.

“It was a really good feeling, and I have a similar goal in Germany when I played in Dortmund in front of 80,000 people, so it was really similar, not only against the best crowd in Germany in Dortmund, but when you scored it was really a few seconds, nobody speaks, nobody shouts, that’s a really special thing.”