Well, I almost spoke to Henry Kissinger once. Not about his Secretary of State career nor engineering the Unites States’ opening to China, nor negotiating the American military exit from Vietnam, nor reshaping U.S. relationships with the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, nor creating a legacy that, upon his death at 100, is being described as both enormously powerful and not-a-little hypocritical.

No, no. It was about soccer. And, anyway, he didn’t come to the phone.

This was in early 1990 and was related to the efforts of a South African-born son of German and Scottish parents who at the time lived in England but was attempting to cut through some red tape to expedite his naturalization as a U.S. citizen. The urgency was for the fellow to be eligible to play for the Yanks’ side in that summer’s World Cup.

Sounded like the kind of thing a world-famous strong-armed diplomat such as Kissinger could fix, no?

The athlete in question was Roy Wegerle, then 25 years old. Wegerle believed that, based on various national connections, he should be permitted to choose his “home team” among (then-West) Germany, Scotland or England—all of which had qualified for the quadrennial soccer championship. Yet he preferred wearing the U.S. colors because he was married to an American woman, whom he had met when both were students at the University of South Florida, and he intended to settle on these shores. Unsaid—and maybe not to the point, but true nevertheless—talent was much thinner on the U.S. side and therefore Wegerle’s best bet to see plenty of playing time.

What I knew those days about Kissinger, beyond the obvious—that he was a shaker and mover known for getting his way—was that he once said world soccer politics “make me nostalgic for the Middle East.” Described as the “No. 1 U.S. soccer fan” before the sport really caught on in the States, Kissinger served as chairman of the board of the old North American Soccer League, which gained sudden attention in the late 1970s when the sport’s legendary Brazilian Pele finished his career with the New York Cosmos. He was convinced to take that leap, Pele said, by Kissinger, who once compared the game to warfare—and also ballet.

There meanwhile was an NASL tie to Wegerle, who had signed his first professional contract with the Tampa Bay franchise right out of college.

I was not aware, until reading it in last week’s New York Times obituary, that Kissinger—as a young lad in his native Germany just as Hitler was ratcheting up the Holocaust machinery—was so “passionate about soccer….that he risked confrontations with Nazi toughs to see games even after signs had gone up at one stadium declaring ‘Juden Verboten.’”

So, as the opening of that ’90 World Cup approached, the word was out that Kissinger would be the ideal person to expedite Wegerle’s naturalization. Because Wegerle’s wedding had occurred in July of 1987, that left him one month short of eligibility for U.S. citizenship in time for ’90 Cup’s early June start.

Oddly, though Wegerle was meanwhile thriving in the English Premier League as a proven scoring threat for London’s Queens Park Rangers, U.S. national team coach Bob Gansler was noticeably cool to welcoming Wegerle aboard.  Besides, immigration lawyers weren’t sure Wegerle’s green card would be valid since he had been living and working outside the United States for almost four years.

Anyway, with the U.S. national soccer team among my Newsday assignments, it was time for a phone call to Kissinger Associates, the New York City-based international geopolitical consulting firm which had been founded and run since 1982 by the former Secretary of State and former National Security Advisor.

Didn’t get past his spokeswoman, though. She made it clear that Kissinger had better things to do (and more important people to talk to), saying that the Wegerle situation was “not something he would get involved in.”

So: Close but no cigar.

Wegerle did become an American citizen within a couple of years and did play for the U.S. national team (for 14 years) and did appear in two World Cups with the Yanks (in 1994 and ’98), then turned to professional golf.

But I really did speak to Pele a couple of times.