Giampaolo's comments are likely to resonate with supporters of many middle-sized clubs around Europe where a good performance once season simply means a rebuilding job the next as their key performers are snapped up by top clubs.
Giampaolo led the Genoa-based team to 10th place in Serie A last season, his first in charge, and they began the present campaign brightly, especially at home where they won their first six league games.
They held sixth place for more than 20 rounds of matches and looked capable of challenging for a place in the Champions League but have now dropped to eighth after losing 4-1 at lowly Crotone and then 5-0 at home to Inter Milan on Sunday.
"There comes a time when you have to take a leap in quality," Giampaolo told reporters. "You need to go from being adolescent to being a man, otherwise you are stuck in limbo."
"As far as I'm concerned, there is no equation by which you can sell players and improve your position in the table, it doesn't exist."
"A team that gets 40 points and sells its best players, the next year it gets 48 points and sells its best players... how many points does in need to get after that? Seventy?"
The players who departed at the end of last season included central defender Milan Skriniar, sold to Inter Milan, and forwards Luis Muriel, sold to Sevilla, and Patrick Schick, loaned to AS Roma.
Inter Milan captain Mauro Icardi, who scored four goals on Sunday, is also among other players who have been allowed to leave Sampdoria in the last few years.
Sampdoria enjoyed a golden period around the end of the 1980s and early 1990s where a team which included players such as Toninho Cerezo, Roberto Mancini and Gianluca Vialli won their only Serie A title as well as the old European Cup Winners' Cup.
They also reached the final of the European Cup in 1992.
Decline set in and the team spent four seasons in Serie B before winning promotion back to the top flight in 2003, but there has never been a return to the halcyon days.
Giampaolo is unlikely to have taken much comfort from the words of his president Massimo Ferrero before Sunday's game when he talked openly of the transfer possibilities in the current team.
"Do I regret selling Skriniar for the market price? I'm not a man of regrets," said Ferrero.
Uruguayan midfielder Lucas Torreira, signed in 2016, is top of the selling list.
"He's an extraordinary player and lots of teams want him, not just Inter Milan and Napoli but other clubs, from abroad," said Ferrero. "Where will he go? Wherever he wants.
"We signed him when nobody knew him. In life and in football, you need courage," he added.
Ferrero was also asked if there had been in interest in midfielders Dennis Praet and Karol Linetty. "Everyone has been asking about them," he replied.
Not the words Giampaolo would have wanted to hear.
(Writing by Brian Homewood in Bern, editing by Pritha Sarkar)
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