He is also the former head coach of both the United States men's national team and the Los Angeles Galaxy of Major League Soccer.

Sampson attended UCLA briefly before transferring to Foothill Community College, located in Los Altos Hills, California, in 1975.

At Foothill Community he earned All-American honors while playing on the 1976 California junior college state championship team.

While at Stanford he entered the coaching ranks with the Awalt High School boys varsity soccer team in Mountain View, California.

At the end of the 1985 season, Santa Clara University hired him away from UCLA to serve as their men's soccer head coach.

In 1989, he achieved his greatest success as a college coach when he led Santa Clara to the NCAA Men's Soccer Championship.

After leaving Santa Clara, Sampson became an assistant to Bora Milutinović on the United States national team in 1993 and was on the staff when the U.S. hosted the 1994 FIFA World Cup.

When Milutinović resigned from the team after the World Cup, the United States Soccer Federation (USSF) named Sampson as the interim coach in April 1995.

After leading the US to a surprising fourth-place finish at the Copa América 1995, including a 3–0 romp over Argentina, as well as a victory over arch-rivals Mexico in the quarterfinals, Sampson was promoted to full-time national team coach in August 1995.

However, after Costa Rica needed the away goals tiebreaker to get past Cuba in the second round of qualifying for the 2006 World Cup, Sampson was fired.

[9] Steve Sampson was hired as the head men's soccer coach at California Polytechnic State University on December 4, 2014.