Shortly after Orlando Cruz's forehead crumpled to the canvas in the early hours of Sunday morning, an act of involuntary genuflection wrought by a blunting right hook and left uppercut, his opponent Orlando Salido offered this verdict: "He's a good fighter, he moves well in the ring," he said. "But he's not anything special."

In boxing terms, Salido, now the WBO featherweight champion, was right. Cruz was defiant but he took a beating. At 32, he is unlikely to fight for a world title again. But we can also say this: by coming out as the first openly gay fighter, and then scrapping until his synapses were sparked, he will have chiselled away at fossilised perceptions and inspired others for generations to come. By that measure, Cruz is special indeed.

It was noticeable how minor an issue Cruz's sexuality was. Apart from the occasional boo when he entered the ring – a standard reaction when a Mexican fights a Puerto Rican – few seemed to care. It was a welcome change after Tyson Fury called Lennox Lewis and Wladimir Klitschko "homosexual" on Twitter last week, but it also made you wonder: if boxing, a sport so blue-collar that every bill seems to carry the whiff of Lynx, lager and hard-luck stories, can be comfortable with an openly gay participant, why can't football?

Most will have a ready list of two-word answers: Justin Fashanu and Le Saux, the fansand the media. That Graeme le Saux is not gay didn't seem to matter; reading the Guardian was enough. In May, the Observer revealed that the PFA chairman, Clarke Carlisle, was approached by eight gay footballers – of whom seven remained quiet not because of the perceived negative reaction from team-mates, but fears of how fans and the media would respond.

Recent research, however, suggests that football supporters might not be as homophobic as is generally thought. In 2012, the academics Ellis Cashmore and Jamie Cleland published a paper in the British Journal of Sociology, based on 3,500 anonymous interviews, which found that supporters had "more permissive and liberal" attitudes towards homosexuality than was widely assumed, with only 7% believing there was no place for gay players. Of course that's still too many: in a crowd of 3,000 it equates to over 200 people, more than enough for their bile to be heard, but it's fewer than widely assumed.

Cleland also analysed attitudes towards gay footballers on 48 online football message boards for another paper published this year – and that found those expressing homophobic views were repeatedly challenged by other supporters. However, that doesn't necessarily happen at matches: last season, for instance, homophobic chants were sung at Brighton fans in nearly three-quarters of games – with Cleland finding fans fearing for their safety if they confronted others about their behaviour.

"I have been quite surprised by the recent data," says Cleland, a lecturer in criminology at Loughborough University. "There is a vocal minority, and we can't ignore that. But that minority is becoming smaller, certainly compared to the 80s and 90s. Meanwhile a forthcoming paper of mine suggests the media – which many suspect is another part of the problem – is increasingly changing its attitude towards gay players."

What of attitudes to gay players within teams? Again, research suggests they are becoming more liberal. In 2002 Eric Anderson, a sociologist at the University of Winchester, interviewed 26 openly gay male athletes in the US and found sport "a bastion of hegemonic masculinity, heterosexism and homophobia", yet when he did the same in 2010 he discovered far less prejudice. In 2002, gay athletes didn't discuss their sexuality with team-mates; by 2010 they were doing so openly. Players also reported that insults such as "fag", were used far less frequently, if at all.

In 2006, Sports Illustrated surveyed 450 MLB players, 248 NBA players, 357 NFL players and 346 NHL players and asked if they would accept an openly gay player on their team. Eighty per cent of NHL players said they would, while the figure was around 60% in American football, basketball and baseball. It would be fascinating to see whether those figures have moved northwards in the past seven years – and what similar research in football would uncover.

Instead, all we know is this: there are around 3,000 professional footballers in Britain, and not one of them is openly gay. Conservatively you could add a zero to that number to get a global figure. And how many of these 30,000 are out? Two. Anton Hysen at the Swedish semi-professional team Utsiktens BK and Robbie Rogers at LA Galaxy. Isn't this more than a little strange?

Unfortunately football's leaders have rarely led on this issue. Fifa president Sepp Blatter's joke that gay supporters travelling to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, where homosexuality is illegal, should "refrain from any sexual activities" was fairly typical. Others remain quiet, preferring for the issue to be kept in the closet. But in a week when Rogers announced that he was writing an autobiography, Coming Out To Play, everyone in the game should be striving to create an environment where anyone who wants to follow his lead can do so without fear or prejudice. So that, like Cruz, they are judged only on how they perform.