Guy Crescent (10 June 1920 – 16 October 1996) was a French businessman. He was the president of the company from 1963 to 1985, and of football club Paris Saint-Germain in 1971, which he helped create a year prior.
Biography
Early life
Guy Crescent was born on 10 June 1920 in Paris. He was diagnosed with polio at the age of three months.
He completed eight years of mecanotherapy and rehabilitation at a very high level to be able to walk for the first time at the age of twelve.
Education and World War II
Crescent completed his secondary schooling at the Collège Stanislas de Paris and the Lycée Saint-Louis-de-Gonzague, and subsequently joined the Paris Law Faculty. His studies were interrupted by World War II. He eventually obtained the Baccalauréat and a law degree.
Due to his disability, Crescent was exempt from military duties, but joined the in the French Resistance by February 1941. He completed missions in Germany, on behalf of the in September 1944 until June 1945, seconded to the Third United States Army.
Calberson
Crescent's professional activities were always carried out within the group. He entered the company successively as a truck oiler and a truck driver, before eventually being appointed as the technical and commercial director on 1 July 1950. Crescent was appointed as the president on 15 September 1963.
Guy Crescent retired in 1985, after 43 years of being in the company. He was then named Honorary President of Calberson.
Paris Saint-Germain and Paris FC
Crescent contributed to the revival of football in Paris in 1970 by participating in the creation of Paris Saint-Germain Football Club (PSG). Initially vice president from 1970 to 1971, he became president of the club in June 1971, a role in which he would stay for six months.
In 1970, he brought about the formation of PSG, with the help of some passionate industrialists like him (Henri Patrelle and Pierre-Étienne Guyot), and in conjunction with the French Football Federation. The professional team was created, taking care of its young players, and participating in the national championship to support the new stadium, the Parc des Princes, replacing the previous one that had to be destroyed for the penetration of the Boulevard Périphérique.
In 1971, while he was the president of PSG, Crescent was at the center of efforts to bring Brazilian footballer Pelé to Paris. Crescent traveled to Brazil to engage in negotiations with Pelé's club Santos, who were in need of money, but the move never materialized.
A documentary film titled PSG, ce club qui a failli ne pas exister () was made in 2016. It traced back the first four years of managing of the Parisian club which had never been told, especially by those who were involved in the adventure.
In 1972, PSG split into two. Crescent became the president of Paris FC, the newly re-formed club, from 1973 to 1975.
For the occasion of the 50th anniversary of PSG in 2020, the president of the club Nasser Al-Khelaifi along with the city of Poissy decided to pay tribute to Crescent by renaming a street near the new Paris Saint-Germain Training Center in honour of him.
Other activities
His entire life, Guy Crescent helped people with disabilities, and was involved in numerous associative and humanitarian actions, particularly in the fight against cancer and the reintegration of former drug addicts into the working world.
Notably, Crescent has been:
Honorary President of SOS Amitié
president of the Bank of Life Cancer Research Association
vice-president of the Foundation in Lyon
member of the Rotary Club of Paris. As part of Rotary, he created Rotaract in France, for young people aged 18 to 20. Guy Crescent's associative life and humanitarian actions were influenced from the very beginning of his life, as he contracted polio at the age of three months, which had fully paralyzed his lower limbs.
At the age of four, Crescent benefited from a new method of polio treatment that had been invented by Dr. Nicod, a Swiss. It was called mechanotherapy. Crescent was first able to walk at the age of twelve, using heavy orthopedic devices. He simultaneously continued with his studies in this period of frenzied rehabilitation. Guy would not forget all those, like himself, that had been affected by this disease, and later in his life, he would go on to do several humanitarian actions.