Liverpool include Philippe Coutinho in Champions League squad after Barcelona transfer saga

Liverpool have taken the next step in their plan to reintegrate Philippe Coutinho into Jurgen Klopp's first-team setup by naming the unsettled Brazilian in their squad for the group stages of the Champions League.

Coutinho was involved in one of the summer window's most protracted and turbulent transfer sagas, with Barcelona failing to land their priority target despite tabling three lucrative offers. The player also emailed an official transfer request to no avail.

Another sizable twist came at the weekend, when Blaugrana director Albert Soler, appearing alongside technical secretary Robert Fernandez at an unusual post-deadline press conference that became something of a forensic dissection of Barcelona's myriad of summer failures, stated that Liverpool demanded €200m (£183.8m, $238.1m) for Coutinho in the final hours of the Spanish window.

"Yesterday at the last minute, after weeks of offers and conversations, Liverpool put a price on a player that we wanted," he told reporters. "A price of €200m and we decided not to do it. This club will not enter into this new way of understanding football.

"This club belongs to its members and we will not act irresponsibly. Our priority are always sporting matters, but we have to manage our finances and there are limits that you cannot go beyond."

That is a claim firmly rebuffed by Liverpool, who have maintained all summer that Coutinho, who signed a new long-term contract in January that crucially did not contain a release clause, is simply not for sale at any price.

The wantaway 25-year-old missed all three of the Reds' opening three top-flight matches against Watford, Crystal Palace and Arsenal in addition to the two-legged Champions League play-off clash with Bundesliga outfit Hoffenheim due to a combination of back issues and illness.

However, Coutinho was subsequently deemed fit enough to play for Brazil and came off the bench to score for Tite's in-form side during a 2-0 World Cup qualifying victory over Ecuador in Porto Alegre last week. He will also hope to feature in Colombia on Tuesday evening (5 September) before flying back to the United Kingdom, where he should be in contention to face Manchester City in the Premier League.

It was speculated during the height of the Coutinho saga that he had told Liverpool that he wished to be omitted from their Champions League squad, presumably with the idea of not being cup-tied for Europe's elite club competition should that dream switch to Barcelona still come to pass.

However, as stated by Sky Sports, he was included in the 25-man group that had to be sent off by midnight on Friday 1 September. Klopp's team, back in the group stages for the first time in three years, begin their Champions League campaign at home to Sevilla on 13 September in a rematch of the 2015-16 Europa League final before respective trips to Spartak Moscow and Maribor.