Wasn't it something like you have to sell a certain amount of your jerseys to be able to get a 3rd one. I'm not sure if they changed that aspect of it or not.
Problem with having only a red one and a blue/yellow one is we need to have a lighter color scheme when teams want to wear their dark jerseys at home.
I don't see us bringing back that blue/yellow scheme for a long time, especially cause they like the whole NY is red slogan. They rarely wore that jersey anyway, they wore the whites every chance they could and now are doing the same with the reds so adding a 3rd jersey doesn't make much sense if they don't think it will sell.
Seattle, Portland, and LA Galaxy have all had 3rd kits somewhat recently (2016 for the first 2,) but that was all I found (I didn't look all that hard TBH.)
I've always thought that 'you need a white/light kit' is a US sports thing, that doesn't seem to be the norm in soccer, or at least there are plenty of teams that have 2 different color shirts rather than light and dark (e.g. Leicester City has blue and then a dark gray as their 2nd kit, or in the past Liverpoop has had their standard red (which is darker than ours, plus a black or purple.) Bayern Munich has also had seasons where they've done a red/blue home/away scheme, though those teams usually have 3rd kits they could use in a pinch. Maybe you could call it 'bright' vs 'dark' but that's not entirely the same
Closer to home, Portland went with a red secondary shirt to their primary dark green for their first couple of seasons. Houston had a black 2nd kit last year along with their standard Orange. Looking at last year's kits there wouldn't have been an unresolvable color conflict with any team in the league if we'd had the Red primary and the Dark Blue/Yellow secondary.
It's ultimately not all that important, maybe it's a result of having all the jerseys come from the same manufacturer, but there's definitely an ultra-conformist trend in MLS jerseys (so much that even successful schemes like Portland's Rose City Red, or our Blue/Yellows, or Seattle's Pacific Blue) tend to get replaced with lame rehashes of 'standard color with white highlights' and 'reverse white/light version with standard color highlights' (and not just here but around the league.)
I found an old article announcing the 2016 blue/yellow jersey, which talked about how they integrated 'New York is Red' elements into it.
I could see not wanting blue because it's a color used by intracity rivals (even though we had it first,) but if that's a concern, grey is an especially bad choice, as boy city had a grey 'concrete jungle' 2nd kit last season.
I'll have to see it first, but I liked those blue/yellow kits, right now I'm having a hard time envisioning how their standard white shirt with some grey on it is going to be an upgrade over those.
agh, when does the season start again, I'm putting way too much thought into this...