There was a time when Internazionale tops were just as popular as Barcelona and Real Madrid ones among Glaswegian school kids pondering their sartorial choices for PE class.

However, it's hard to imagine anyone other than burgeoning young football hipsters and gallus pranksters out to wind up their Celtic-supporting classmates donning one nowadays, and even they might struggle.

Not because Inter jerseys are no longer widely available, but because they don't look like Inter jerseys anymore.

Gone are the iconic thick black and blue stripes, replaced this season by a design which is all black save for a handful of blue pinstripes so narrow they can only be described - to borrow John Cleese's French accent from The Meaning of Life - as "wafer thin."

Look for Inter in any of their old haunts - the Champions League, the top of Serie A - and you won't find them. Look for Massimo Moratti, the likeable president who oversaw the club's transition from over-spending basket case in the nineties to all-conquering force in the mid-to-late noughties, and you won't find him either. You will find Javier Zanetti, but not on the pitch, the Argentine veteran having ascended to the role of vice-president after finally ending a playing career entailing well over 800 appearances in Nerazzurri colours.

It's all part of a process of renewal and rebranding set in motion by Indonesian media magnate Erick Thohir relieving Moratti of his 70% shareholding in late 2013. Part-owner of MLS outfit DC United, Thohir has made sweeping structural and strategic changes in his first 16 months at Inter with the express intention of modernising the 106-year-old institution, opening it up to new revenue streams and, essentially, making it more like a Barclays Premier League club.

"When you're on top, you're comfortable, you get fat and lazy and then suddenly there's another company and it's working hard and fighting to compete," the 44-year-old told the Financial Times last October. "In our case it was the English Premier League and Germany's Bundesliga."

Inter's ability to lure star players to San Siro may not be what it was, but under Thohir they have become something of a haven for stars of the corporate world such as former Manchester United CEO Michael Bolingbroke.

Until the club arrest the on-field decline they've suffered since the 2010 treble win though, the fans are entitled to respond to all this supposed off-field progress more sullenly and indifferently than Marco Negri responded to scoring hat tricks.

The signing of a Brazilian left-back named Dodo in pre-season was an ironic touch, but Inter's extinction as a major power in European football had been heralded long before then. Between 2005 and 2011 'La Beneamata' won a remarkable 15 trophies. Since then? None.

While it may seem a strange charge to level at any club president in the often cut-throat world of Serie A, Thohir has occasionally seemed too nice, too eager to please. He swiftly reneged on a deal to swap midfielder Fredy Guarin with then Juventus striker Mirko Vucinic in January 2014 when fans protested, and vacillated over the sacking of Walter Mazzarri, eventually pulling the trigger four months into the current campaign despite having more than sufficient grounds to dispense with the tactician's services in the summer.

That said, his choice of successor may well prove to be a masterstroke. In Roberto Mancini Inter have not only snared theirselves a bona fide coaching heavyweight, but also someone with a strong link to the past, an invaluable quality to have at a time when cherished stalwarts like Moratti and Zanetti are fading into the background.

Results have been up and down since Mancini - responsible for seven of the aforementioned 15 trophies in his first spell at the club - returned, but that Inter are playing with more spirit and attacking verve than they did under Mazzarri is beyond question, and the response from the squad has been overwhelmingly positive.

"Having the confidence of the coach is absolutely vital, both for individual players and the team as a whole," commented Guarin after his brace in Sunday's impressive 4-1 win at Atalanta. "The boss brings bags of enthusiasm every single day."

The Colombian and his teammates will have to harness that enthusiasm at a rocking Celtic Park tomorrow night if Inter are to take a first step towards fulfilling Thohir's dreams of the Europa League final, a return to the Champions League and a future where blue and black stripes are a common sight on Glasgow's school pitches once again.