"The game could use a little bit of an injection at this point, " added Sampson, who was head coach of the US team at France 98 and assistant coach to Bora Milutinovic for the 1994 tournament on home turf.
Global central banks, with the ECB at the head, attempted to bailout the European financial sector on Thursday announcing a psychologically important injection of U.S. dollar liquidity.
Curry took a pain-killing injection before the game for the first time in his career, though he looked slow early and even covered his head in a towel on the bench late in the first quarter.