DO­HA, Qatar (AP) — Ger­many's play­ers cov­ered their mouths for their team pho­to be­fore their open­ing World Cup match to protest against FI­FA for its clam­p­down on sev­en teams' plans to wear arm­bands that were seen as a re­buke to host na­tion Qatar’s hu­man rights record.

The Ger­many team lined up in the tra­di­tion­al for­ma­tion be­fore Wednes­day’s game against Japan and each of the 11 play­ers cov­ered their mouth with their right hand.

“It was a sign from the team, from us, that FI­FA is muz­zling us,” Ger­many coach Han­si Flick said af­ter his team's 2-1 loss to Japan.

The ges­ture was a re­sponse to FI­FA’s warn­ing to the sev­en Eu­ro­pean fed­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing Ger­many’s, that play­ers would be pe­nal­ized if they wore col­or­ful “One Love” arm­bands as a sym­bol for in­clu­sion and di­ver­si­ty. Ger­many cap­tain Manuel Neuer and the oth­er six team cap­tains had planned to wear the arm­bands for their open­ing games at the World Cup.

Ger­man soc­cer fed­er­a­tion DFB tweet­ed a state­ment on its po­si­tion dur­ing Wednes­day's game.

“With our cap­tain’s arm­band, we want­ed to send a sig­nal for val­ues that we live in the na­tion­al team: di­ver­si­ty and mu­tu­al re­spect. Be­ing loud to­geth­er with oth­er na­tions.

"It’s not a po­lit­i­cal mes­sage: hu­man rights are non­nego­tiable. That should be ob­vi­ous. Un­for­tu­nate­ly it still isn’t. That’s why this mes­sage is so im­por­tant to us,” the fed­er­a­tion said. "Deny­ing us the arm­band is like muz­zling us. Our stance stands."

Qatar has been un­der scruti­ny for its hu­man rights record and laws crim­i­nal­iz­ing ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty.

Soc­cer's gov­ern­ing body is­sued its warn­ing Mon­day just hours be­fore Eng­land and the Nether­lands were set to play with their cap­tains wear­ing the heart-shaped, mul­ti­col­ored lo­go of the “One Love” cam­paign. FI­FA said the play­ers would im­me­di­ate­ly be shown a yel­low card and could face fur­ther con­se­quences.

Ger­many coach Han­si Flick and soc­cer fed­er­a­tion pres­i­dent Bernd Neuen­dorf were among those to crit­i­cize FI­FA’s de­ci­sion.

Neuen­dorf called the warn­ing “an­oth­er low blow” from FI­FA. The gov­ern­ing body hasn't com­ment­ed on Wednes­day's ges­ture by the Ger­mans.

Ger­man In­te­ri­or Min­is­ter Nan­cy Faeser, who is al­so re­spon­si­ble for sports, wore a “One Love” arm­band in the stands at the Ger­many-Japan game, where she was sit­ting be­side FI­FA pres­i­dent Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no. Faeser tweet­ed a pho­to of her­self wear­ing it with the hash­tag #OneLove.

News agency DPA re­port­ed Faeser had the arm­band on un­der a pink blaz­er that she took off dur­ing the first half.

Ear­li­er, Faeser crit­i­cized Qatar for forc­ing a Ger­man fan to re­move a rain­bow-col­ored arm­band and head­band at an­oth­er game.

“This is not in line with my un­der­stand­ing of the se­cu­ri­ty guar­an­tees that I was giv­en by the (Qatari) in­te­ri­or min­is­ter,” Faeser said. “Se­cu­ri­ty must ap­ply to all peo­ple. I’m very dis­ap­point­ed about this.”

The rain­bow flag is a wide­ly used as a sym­bol of tol­er­ance with re­gard to sex­u­al di­ver­si­ty.

Faeser said in her opin­ion “such sym­bols should be open­ly shown.”