I never knew that the years Meola spent away from the national team were due to a family issue (and then some USSF official blackballing him from the national team even longer than that as a result). I'm not sure any of that had been made public before. All of the (mostly unsourced) information about this online makes it seem like he just made some eccentric, spur of the moment decision to leave the national team to pursue other hobbies, and that it took the team a long time to forgive him for that.
Actually, I'm looking up some articles now, and I see that this was all sort of news at the time as well. Here's a Washington Post article from 1996 noting that Meola left the national team in part because he needed to attend to family matters, and also quoting an unnamed USSF official who disparaged "Tony's ego" and said he didn't want him back in training camp. It also has some very unsympathetic quotes from John Harkes (described as a "boyhood friend") about Meola's absence and return. The one bit of news from Kickin' It that I haven't found anywhere online: Meola claims he had an offer on the table from Southampton in the Premier League (and Botafogo in Brazil) following the '94 World Cup, but he had things to deal with domestically, and MLS was scheduled to start in 7 months, so he figured he would just wait for that so he wouldn't have to move abroad. But then MLS ended up delaying its start date for another year, Meola had to scramble to find work to fill that time period, and Southampton ended up being a missed opportunity.