(Reuters) - Ecuador's coach Reinaldo Rueda conceded that facing his former team Honduras would be a bitter-sweet occasion, with the losing side facing the prospect of elimination from the World Cup.

The Group E game on Friday has a sub-plot of the battle of the former coaches.

Rueda was in charge of Honduras at the 2010 World Cup when they went out in the first round without scoring a goal.

Current Honduras coach Luis Fernando Suarez is the man who led Ecuador to the second round of the 2006 tournament.

To add to the coincidences, both coaches are Colombian.

"It is a match that has those special emotional ingredients," Rueda told a news conference on Thursday.

"All of us on the technical staff have a lot of affection and a lot of gratitude for the Honduran people and those lads on the team," he added.

He did not think that he had any inside information from the 2010 tournament that would give him an advantage. He left the job shortly after the last World Cup.

"It is a different Honduras to the one we had four years ago. It is a Honduras...that has had four years to mature," he said, pointing to their strong recent record of qualifying for the last two World Cups and Olympic soccer tournaments.

Honduras have never won a game at the World Cup and their last goal came in the 1982 tournament. They lost 3-0 to France on Sunday.

Ecuador also got off to a losing start, beaten 2-1 by Switzerland, and Rueda said he would not make the mistake of taking Honduras lightly in a must-win game for both teams.

"It is a trait of ours in South America to undervalue our rivals and that teaches us a lesson," he said.

Rueda said he would always be under pressure to match the achievements of the 2006 Ecuador team who made the last 16 for the only time in the country's history.

"We have to repeat history. That era has been considered and discussed since I arrived in Ecuador," he said.

Suarez also played down the influence of the coaching job swap on the match.

"It will end as a footnote, something strange or odd. It is a clash between two football teams not two coaches."