Well, I'm also English and I didn't read them that way. However, I do think that Paul is telling people that competing with Sam in certain domains would be extraordinarily difficult.

The other thing is that if you take a look at Paul Graham's blog posts, he used to regularly thank Sam at the bottom of these -- this isn't something you do if you don't like or respect someone. However, on the other hand, perhaps they fell out at some point? I can't personally make out that signal from the little data there is.