Mark-Anthony Kaye scored in the first half and Adama Diomande and Carlos Vela added late goals to help MLS-leading Los Angeles FC beat the Columbus Crew 3-0 on Saturday night. Tyler Miller made one save for his fifth shutout in 12 starts this season. Latif Blessing fed Kaye, who crashed up the right side of the penalty area and rolled it in with the first touch off his left foot to open the scoring in the 37th minute. LAFC (8-1-3) nearly increased its lead a couple of minutes later, but goalkeeper Joe Bendik made a reaction save to Diego Rossi’s close-range shot. Advertisement Diomande made it 2-0 in the 88th minute with a putback of Josh Perez’s shot that rebounded off the crossbar. Vela added his league-leading 12th goal of the season with an unassisted strike from a yard behind the penalty arc in the 90th. The Crew have lost six of their last seven to drop to 5-7-1.<doc-sep>April showers bring May flowers ... and set up wild MLS seasons chock-full of surprising results and consensus-smashing results. It took a while to get here, but it feels like MLS is finally the league we all know and mostly wring our hands about. A league that provides more than its fair share of chaos. A league that tests our patience with a round of results that confounds as much as it clarifies. Who's good? Who's bad? These are our weekly MLS Power Rankings. Previous rankings: Week 7 | Week 6 | Week 5 | Week 4 | Week 3 | Week 2 | Week 1 1. LAFC (7 wins, 1 draw, 1 loss) Previous ranking: 1 Next MLS match: Sunday, April 28, at Seattle (3.30 p.m. ET, live on ESPN and ESPN Deportes) OK, so LAFC lost on the road to Vancouver on Wednesday, but Bob Bradley's club also made a statement against Seattle on Sunday night, busting up the second-best team in the league with a strong performance at Banc of California Stadium. How good is LAFC? Good enough to remain the best team in MLS. See you all next week. Previous ranking: 2 Next MLS match: Wednesday, April 24, vs. San Jose Earthquakes (10.30 p.m. ET, live on ESPN+) There's this: The Sounders were the last unbeaten team in MLS when the whistle blew in L.A. on Sunday night. That won't make them feel better about the performance, a big loss to LAFC, but there's hope that the season will bend toward Seattle across 34 games. Good team, bad night. Previous ranking: 3 Next MLS match: Wednesday, April 24, at Minnesota (8 p.m. ET, live on ESPN+) Zlatan Ibrahimovic won himself (another) penalty, Diego Polenta scored his first MLS goal and the Galaxy knocked the Dynamo from the ranks of the unbeaten. The real show on Friday was the battle between Ibrahimovic and AJ DeLaGarza. Back in his old stomping grounds, DeLaGarza decided to fight a lion. He did not win. Previous ranking: 4 Next MLS match: Saturday, April 27, vs. Columbus Crew (8.30 p.m. ET, live on ESPN+) The unbeaten run was always going to end at some point. Friday's loss wasn't inevitable -- the Dynamo went toe-to-toe with the Galaxy on the road -- but we can't downgrade Houston dramatically because of it. Wilmer Cabrera's team looks to be the real deal and will be in the mix for the top spot in the West all year. If it can hold on to Alberth Elis. Previous ranking: 8 Next MLS match: Saturday, April 27, vs. San Jose (3.30 p.m. ET) First, the facts: Atlanta is not very good right now and beating it isn't all that unique anymore. That being said, walking into Mercedes-Benz Stadium and taking down the champions is no small feat for a young side like FC Dallas. Take note of the goal scorers for the Hoops: 18-year academy product Jesus Ferreira and offseason DP signing Bryan Acosta.<doc-sep>Guillermo Barros Schelotto doesn’t have to finalize his lineup until about an hour before Saturday afternoon’s home game with New York City FC, which is a good thing since the Galaxy coach went to bed Friday not knowing which starters will be ready to play. Midfielder Jonathan dos Santos, arguably the team’s best player through the first 10 games, exited Wednesday’s loss in Columbus in the first half with what has been reported as a left hamstring injury. He didn’t train with the team Friday and his availability won’t be known until just before kickoff. Right back Julian Araujo hasn’t played since twisting an ankle nearly three weeks ago. But he may have to play since Rolf Feltscher, the team’s other right back, is limping with a toe injury that slowed him the last two games. Then there are the healthy players who simply are tired heading into the team’s third game in eight days, a span that included two cross-country flights. Advertisement “In the morning we’ll make a decision,” Schelotto said. The Galaxy have won one of their last four games, scoring just five goals in that span. And the loss in Columbus was the second in as many tries, matching the team’s longest losing streak since last May. Or, as the coach calls it, a learning experience. “Every time you lose — if you play well and you lose or you play badly and you lose — there are a lot of things to learn,” Schelotto said. Captain Zlatan Ibrahimovic also is slumping — well, by his standards anyway — with the Columbus game marking just the fourth start in which he failed to get a goal or assist since mid-August. But the good news for the Galaxy (7-3-1) is they will be back at Dignity Health Sports Park, where they are an MLS-best 6-0, the team’s best home start since its first season in 1996. Meanwhile New York City (3-1-6) is unbeaten in its last six, the longest such streak in the league. Kaye: No time for panic at LAFC LAFC rolled through the first seven weeks of the season unbeaten and all but unstoppable, averaging three goals a game while giving up the fewest. Advertisement The team has won just once since. But midfielder Mark-Anthony Kaye said there’s no sense of worry heading into Saturday’s game at Columbus. “Our first 11 games of the season we lost one,” he said. “If the next 23 games are the same, we lose three games all year. So it’s not the right time to panic.” Maybe not. But a little concern may be in order. LAFC (7-1-3) still has the league’s best record and highest-scoring attack but has won just one of its last four and has one goal in its last 209 minutes, with opponents frustrating that offense by playing as many as eight defenders behind the ball. Sign up for our weekly soccer newsletter » Advertisement Kaye said it’s up to LAFC to make adjustments of its own. “Teams are starting to change up the way they play against us,” he said. “But that excites us because now we get to work on different things and try to get better. Whenever you’re trying to make a good team and a good culture you have to be ready to adapt to certain things. “We just have to get back to the way we’ve been playing.” This weekend’s trip marks just the team’s third outside the Pacific time zone and comes against a Columbus team that snapped a five-game losing streak with a midweek win over the Galaxy. Saturday’s game will be the third in eight days for the Crew (5-6-1). Advertisement And while Columbus has struggled to score — only four teams have fewer goals than the Crew’s 12 — Zack Steffen has the highest save percentage of any regular goalkeeper in the league and is tied for second in shutouts with four. “The last couple of games have been tough,” Kaye said. “It’s not supposed to be easy all the time. We’re just going to have to push through it.” kevin.baxter@latimes.com | Twitter: @kbaxter11<doc-sep>
Here are three things we learned from LAFC’s 3-0 demolition of Columbus Crew on Saturday night, during which their swagger very much returned. The Columbus Crew were hoping to shock MLS and topple the best team in the league thus far on Saturday night. Hosting Los Angeles FC, who had only scored one goal in their past two matches and were seemingly losing their air of invincibility, the Crew wanted blood. Sadly for Caleb Porter and his burgeoning side, LAFC rediscovered their early-season swagger in one of their better performances of the year. They were not as clinical as in weeks past and the 3-0 scoreline does flatter them a little, but LAFC controlled the match for almost its entirety and never really looked all that threatened. Here are three things we learned from their 3-0 win over the Crew. 3. Carlos Vela is unreal The game was over. By this point, anything that happened had no impact on the result and little on the season altogether, if only to put a further dent in the Columbus Crew’s goal difference. But Carlos Vela’s goal in the dying moments was utterly sensational. Want your voice heard? Join the MLS Multiplex team! Write for us! Picking up the ball just past the halfway line, he turned, spotted a gap between two Crew defenders and immediately burst towards it. Shimmying his hips to evade the half-hearted challenges, he dribbled forwards, splitting the pair, and headed on to the edge of the penalty area. And then, in his inimitable style, with a swing of his swashbuckling left foot, he curled a lovely finish past the futile stretch of Joe Bendik and into the far corner. This was his 12th goal in as many matches. He is the top scorer in the league and is currently on pace to break Josef Martinez’s single-season goals record that was set just last year. Carlos Vela is absolutely unreal and is a key reason why LAFC are top of the tree.