War Memories Fresh for Polic

Forgive Ivan Polic if he doesn’t sing the national anthem with quite as much gusto as he might this Fourth of July.

It’s just that the line about “the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air” has an unfortunate resonance for the Galaxy midfielder.

Last year, Polic, a 26-year-old rookie, was all too aware of that red glare, not to mention the terrifying whistle of falling bombs and the ear-shattering impact of exploding shells.

He was in his hometown of Kraljevo, south of Belgrade in war-ravaged Yugoslavia, trying desperately to keep mind and body together while figuring out how to get back to Southern California as quickly as possible.

“It was a difficult time,” said Polic, who holds a U.S. passport. “A very difficult time.

“I was hoping and praying that things would not get as bad, that it would just be a few bombs and people getting scared. But it just got messier and uglier and I got out.”

Polic had first come to the U.S. when he was 16, joining his father, who owns a machine shop in Los Angeles and had immigrated five years earlier.

Young Ivan attended Leuzinger High in Lawndale and played soccer for a club in Cerritos run by Luis Balboa, the father of veteran U.S. national team defender Marcelo Balboa. Polic then spent a year at El Camino College before going to Southern Methodist University, where he earned a degree in electrical engineering as well as all-Midwest honors in soccer.

The sport, however, was his career choice.

“It was always my dream to play at the professional level, and especially over there [in Yugoslavia] because I grew up over there in the whole culture of soccer,” Polic said.

Polic had hoped to be drafted by Major League Soccer when the league was launched in 1996, but he was overlooked and had to make other plans.

“In the fall of ‘96, I went back to my hometown,” he said. “The team [there] was in the third division at the time. I started playing with them and after about three months I moved to a second-division club. Then, in the summer of ‘97, I moved to a first-division club, Radnicki Nis.”

Although he was native born, Polic found himself in the odd position of being an outsider.

“Definitely,” he said. “I had lots of friends that I grew up with and they would come to see the games, especially in my hometown, and they would yell, ‘Hey, American,’ and ‘Where’s Clinton?’ and this and that. It was a joke for a while, but then people started taking me more seriously.

“It was kind of tough getting into that first-division club, fighting for a position, fighting for a job.

“It’s a decent league, considering how many players go overseas every year. Unfortunately, economics and everything that’s happened in Yugoslavia doesn’t allow the big money to be made.”

What soccer in Yugoslavia does allow is the chance for fate to take a hand. Because there was a war going on, Polic’s life took an unexpected turn.

“I married my wife [Marijana] during that war,” he said. “I actually met her while I was playing for Radnicki Nis. She was a reporter for a TV station.”

But with Yugoslavia under bombardment and refugees fleeing the conflict, Polic knew this was not the life he wanted for him and Marijana.

“I wanted her to get out of the country,” he said. “I had to wait for her at the border in Bulgaria. We got married in Bulgaria--in Bulgarian, a foreign language. Then we had to spend about three weeks in Hungary waiting for the [U.S.] visa. It was a sort of adventure.”

The couple came to the U.S. in December, settling in Redondo Beach. Polic, who had trained with the Galaxy in the spring, finally was signed in April and made his MLS debut in June. He started for the first time last Wednesday, in a victory over D.C. United at Washington.

“It felt good to get the first game out of the way, to get rid of all the jitters,” he said. “I felt more and more comfortable as the game went on.”