It's all true. Some of the games were televised for Copa America 1995. I remember that Norberto Longo and Andres Cantor when asked who impressed them most in the round of group play said los Estados Unidos. I also think Steve is a very decent and nice person. He is very open and communicative with the press. He's a good coach and hopefully gets a shot elsewhere. Certainly, he good at announcing and has guest casted on Spanish soccer broadcasts.
For us, Sampson was a critical transitional figure. Yeah, he pulled some real boners, but the team he bequeathed to Arena was a heck of a lot farther down the road than when Bora left, and I can't think of anyone who would have taken the job at the time who was likely to do better. Remember the names that were floating around before the "acting" was taken off his title? Neither do I, but I think it was mostly foreigners with some success far in the past. I'm sure he'll do fine. In the coaching world, getting fired is just another step on the way to getting hired.
Carlos Queiroz, Carlos Alberto Parriera, and Johan Cruyff were all names thrown around, but I believe the USSF thought they wouldn't have enough money to pay any of them (some may have even been under contract at the time as well). I think there was one other Dutch Ajax type coach whose name was getting some tossing around as well. Was Cruyff done at Barcelona by 1995?
We also need to give Sampson credit for being the right man for the job at the right time. We needed a sea change after the bunker-ball era, and also needed a guy who could give an American face and voice to the US coaching effort. Sampson opened the team up and helped us start to gain confidence that we could be a competitive country without putting 9 behind the ball. Sampson was far from perfect, but he played his role until Bruce came along. He's part of the evolution. I'm proud of him that he got the Ticos job, and he deserves to find his happiness and his niche in the coaching world.
Very fuzzy on this, but rumor at the time was that Queiroz actually accepted the job at one point, agreeing to spend a year putting together that state of the soccer nation report before moving in take charge of the team? Did this happen or was I drinking too much then? Later, Queiroz backed out and the interim was removed from Sampson's name because his team had been getting results? In Sampson's defense, he got the team into a cup, an accomplishment that should not be taken for granted, and the copa America run was spectacular. they failed miserably in the WC, and he wasn't much of an MLS fan, but it's not like he destroyed the US program.
I think you are right but we couldn't come to monetary terms with him so we were just treading water and then eventually gave the job to Steve when he seemed to be doing a good job.